SUGGESTIONS  OF  MODERN  SCIENCE 
CONCERNING  EDUCATION 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON  •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


SUGGESTIONS  OP  MODERN 

SCIENCE  CONCERNING 

EDUCATION 


BY 

HERBERT  S.   JENNINGS 
JOHN  B.   WATSON 

ADOLF  MEYER 
WILLIAM  I.  THOMAS 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1917 

Att  right*  reserved 


V 

COPYBIOHT,  1917, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  October,  1917. 


Xortaooti 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  <fc  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Education 
Library 


FOREWORD 

THE  Joint  Committee  on  Education  was 
formed  to  arouse  an  intelligent  interest  in 
public  schools.  Its  work  was  threefold :  to 
secure  newspaper  publicity  for  educational 
topics,  to  encourage  school  visiting  based  on 
recent  school  surveys  and  a  study  of  experi- 
mental schools,  and  to  seek  what  new  light 
on  the  subject  might  be  obtained  from  modern 
science. 

Some  mothers  whose  daily  care  of  little 
children  during  the  years  when  they  were 
acquiring  knowledge  and  developing  their 
powers  naturally,  instinctively,  were  con- 
vinced that  school  hampered  rather  than 
helped  them.  They  argued  —  if  "sensation 
tends  toward  motion,"  why,  during  the  years 
when  life  is  largely  sensation,  do  we  screw 
our  children  into  desks  five  hours  a  day;  if 
variety  of  type  is  desirable,  why  strive  for 
uniformity ;  if  surplus  energy  is  necessary 
to  further  evolution,  why  not  conserve  that 
wonderful  superabundant  vitality  of  child- 
hood? Might  not  biology,  psychology,  psy- 


vi  FOREWORD 

• 

chopathology,  sociology  offer  suggestions  con- 
cerning a  school  program  which  should  secure 
physical,  mental  and  moral  health,  and  the 
development  of  individual  initiative  and  crea- 
tive power  ? 

The  committee  feel  in  duty  bound  to  share 
with  all  parents  and  teachers  the  remarkable 
series  of  papers  written  in  response  to  their 

need. 

E.  S.  D. 

For  the  Committee. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDBEN  IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCA- 
TION .....  Herbert  S.  Jennings  1 

PRACTICAL  AND  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS  IN  INSTINCT 

AND  HABITS  ....  John  B.  Watson  51 

MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A  CONSTRUCTIVE 

SCHOOL  PROGRAM  ....  Adolf  Meyer  101 

THE  PERSISTENCE  OF  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS  IN  PRES- 
ENT-DAY SOCIETY  AND  THEIR  INFLUENCE  IN  OUR 
EDUCATIONAL  SYSTEM  .  .  William  I.  Thomas  157 

MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  MENTAL  DISEASE 

Adolf  Meyer     199 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN  IN 
RELATION  TO  EDUCATION 


BY 

HERBERT  S.  JENNINGS 

JOHNS   HOPKINS  UNIVEBSITT 


SUGGESTIONS     OF     MODERN 

SCIENCE   CONCERNING 

EDUCATION 

THE   BIOLOGY    OF    CHILDREN    IN 
RELATION  TO  EDUCATION 

WHAT  can  we  do  to  help  the  children 
make  their  lives  worth  while,  —  worth  while 
to  themselves  and  worth  while  to  the  rest  of 
the  world  ? 

This  is  the  question  with  which  these 
lectures  deal.  My  part  is  to  ask :  What  do 
we  know  about  the  nature  of  children,  and 
what  do  we  know  about  the  rules  of  develop- 
ment, that  will  form  a  basis  for  our  efforts? 
I  am  not  to  deal  with  the  content  of  educa- 
tion, nor  with  the  particular  subjects  that 
should  be  taught,  nor  with  the  methods  of 
teaching  them.  For  us  at  present  education 
will  mean  merely  development :  how  best ' 
can  we  help  the  children  to  develop  properly  ?  j 

The  details  to  be  attended  to  are  infinite 
in  number,  but  these  fall  into  a  relatively 

3 


4  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

simple  system,  and  it  is  our  task  to  bring 
into  view  the  main  lines  of  this  system, 
so  that  they  may  serve  as  a  guide  as  to 
details. 

We  are  so  fiercely  interested  in  our  chil- 
dren that  we  can  hardly  see  in  their  proper 
relations  the  facts  that  touch  them ;  our 
hopes,  our  fears,  our  ideals,  almost  cut  off 
our  perception  of  realities.  To  get  a  truer 
view,  it  helps  to  look  at  such  matters  in  a 
new  and  unaccustomed  setting.  This  I  think 
is  why  I,  a  zoologist,  a  general  biologist, 
have  been  asked  to  open  this  discussion  of 
children,  —  in  place  of  some  one  whose  daily 
work  lies  with  children  and  schools,  and  who 
therefore  knows  much  more  about  both  in 
details  than  I  do.  What  we  are  to  do  now  is 
to  study  children  just  as  the  biologist  studies 
a  new  group  of  animals  or  plants.  How  does 
the  biologist  go  to  work? 

If  he  is  to  get  a  really  intimate  knowledge 
of  his  group  of  organisms,  he  has  to  cultivate 
them,  just  as  we  have  to  cultivate  children. 
>  If  he  is  to  cultivate    them  successfully,  there  ^ 
are  three  main  things  that  he  must  know :   •« 

I.  What  is  the  nature  of  these  organ- 
isms ?  What  traits  and  what  capabilities  has 
nature  put  into  them  at  the  beginning  ?  How 


do  they  resemble  other  organisms  and  how 
do  they  differ  from  them?  How  do  they 
differ  among  themselves  ? 

*fll.  What  are  the  main  laws  of  develop- 
ment, and  how  do  they  apply  to  these  or- 
ganisms ? 

-I^III.  How  are  they  and  their  development 
affected  by  things  in  the  world  outside? 
What  conditions,  what  treatment,  are  neces- 
sary for  their  full  development? 

Only  when  he  knows  these  three  things 
can  the  biologist  hope  to  cultivate  his  or- 
ganisms successfully,  so  as  to  obtain  the 
finest  specimens. 

We  must  then  study  our  children  so  as  to 
get  the  answers  to  these  questions.  Now,  in 
beginning  the  study  of  any  particular  group 
of  organisms,  there  are  two  general  princi- 
ples to  be  kept  in  mind.  One  is,  that  any 
group  of  organisms  is  in  some  respects  like 
others ;  so  that  the  biologist  who  has  studied 
other  organisms  would  know  something  about 
children  even  if  he  had  never  seen  or  been 
one.  The  second  principle  is  more  important, 
because  it  is  sometimes  partly  neglected. 
Every  group  of  organisms  differs  in  some 
respects  from  every  other.  In  these  respects 
therefore  the  biologist., can  know  it  only  by 

* 


6  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

studying  this  group  itself.  No  matter  how 
thorough  a  knowledge  of  snails  the  zoologist 
has,  he  will  know  very  little  about  ants,  un- 
less he  studies  ants.  This  second  principle  is 
most  important  in  the  study  of  children, 
for  there  is  no  organism  that  differs  so  much 
from  other  organisms  as  do  human  beings. 
The  things  that  are  of  most  importance 
about  children  must  be  known  from  a  study 
of  children,  rather  than  from  a  study  of  other 
organisms ;  and  the  same  truth  holds  for 
human  affairs  in  general. 

I.     HEREDITY  AND    DIVERSITY   IN   CHILDREN 

We  have  then  before  us  a  flock  of  these 
organisms  that  we  are  to  study  —  a  school 
of  children.  Our  first  question  was  as  to  the 
nature  and  capabilities  of  these  organisms, 
and  how  they  differ  from  others.  Taking 
the  last  question  first,  children  differ  from  all 
other  organisms  in  a  way  that  immensely 
complicates  the  problem  of  how  to  cultivate 
them.  To  cultivate  most  organisms,  it  suffices 
to  protect  them  from  blights,  to  keep  them  well 
nourished,  and  to  keep  the  temperature  and 
other  external  conditions  correct ;  even  so 
much  is  extremely  difficult  for  many  crea- 
tures. In  the  child  all  this  must  be  done, 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION  7 

but  the  chief  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that 
in  the  child  there  are  the  germs  of  an  immense 
number  of  diverse  capabilities  not  found  in 
other  organisms,  which  must  all  be  developed 
if  he  is  to  become  a  man  rather  than  a  vege- 
table. The  child  must  develop  the  power 
to  meet  an  infinite  number  of  diverse  situa- 
tions ;  the  power  to  adapt  itself  to  situations 
that  it  has  never  met.  In  every  generation 
the  requirements  that  it  must  meet  are  di- 
verse from  those  of  any  previous  generation. 
Therefore  the  child  cannot  depend  on  a  few 
instinctive  ways  of  behaving,  as  other  animals 
do  —  even  those  called  higher  animals ;  the 
child  must  develop  its  ways  of  meeting  situa- 
tions in  close  dependence  on  the  situations 
to  be  met.  This,  as  we  have  all  heard,  seems 
to  be  the  reason  why  the  child  at  birth  is  so 
incomplete  in  its  powers,  as  compared  with 
other  creatures ;  this  is  why  it  has  so  long  a 
period  of  immaturity.  Its  long  infancy  and 
childhood  are  fully  taken  up  in  the  slow  devel- 
opment of  those  powers  of  adaptation  which 
we  call  the  mind ;  those  powers  whose  exercise 
is  the  main  work  of  life.  The  child  has  a 
thousand  things  to  develop  where  other 
animals  have  one,  and  this,  for  reasons  which 
we  shall  see  when  we  look  at  the  rules  of 


8  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

development,  makes  the  problem  of  cultiva- 
tion extremely  difficult. 

Examining  more  closely  our  flock  of  chil- 
dren, the  most  extraordinary  thing  that  we 
discover  about  them  is  the  astounding  di- 
versity in  their  fundamental  make-up ;  the 
amazing  variety  of  type  that  nature  has  put 
into  the  collection.  No  two  look  alike,  nor 
like  any  specimens  in  any  other  collection 
of  children.  It  is  only  in  the  past  few  years 
that  we  have  come  to  know,  as  a  part  of 
organized  science,  that  this  is  no  mere  matter 
of  superficial  appearance;  the  diversity  is 
in  their  very  foundations;  in  their  original 
constitution ;  in  the  very  fiber  of  their  being. 
It  lies  as  much  in  their  capabilities  and  tend- 
encies, in  their  mentality  and  character, 
as  it  does  in  their  physical  features.  The 
fact  that  perhaps  strikes  most  the  student 
of  heredity  is  the  astonishing  pains  that 
nature  has  taken  to  produce  variety  of  type, 
and  nowhere  is  this  so  striking  as  in  human 
children.  This  is  no  mere  speculative  opin- 
ion ;  it  is  a  fact,  a  material  fact,  which  forms 
a  part  of  physiology,  and  can  be  studied 
just  as  can  the  digestion  of  food  or  the  cir- 
culation of  the  blood. 

This  fact  of  diversity  of  type  at  the  very 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION  9 

foundations  of  our  being  is  so  basic  for  our 
question  as  to  what  we  can  do  with  our  flock 
of  children ;  and  there  is  so  much  in  education 
that  looks  like  an  attempt  to  undo  what 
nature  has  done  in  this  direction,  that  it  will 
be  best  for  us  to  look  a  bit  closer  at  the  matter, 
and  try  to  form  a  picture  of  the  real  situation. 

Most,  if  not  all,  characteristics  of  living 
things,  which  show  in  one  aspect  as  mental 
or  moral  or  spiritual,  show  in  another  aspect 
as  chemical  and  physical  processes  that  can 
be  observed.  This  plain  fact  does  not  imply 
that  one  of  these  aspects  is  more  fundamental 
or  important  than  the  other;  it  implies 
nothing  more  than  is  implied  by  the  fact 
which  we  all  know,  that  in  order  to  see,  one 
must  have  eyes  and  the  eyes  must  be  opened. 
But  what  is  true  is  that  when  we  get  to  that 
stage  of  knowledge  in  which  we  can  observe 
th^physical  aspect  of  any  peculiarity,  we  can 
follow  much  more  precisely  what  happens ; 
we  can  determine  the  laws  of  development 
and  action  much  more  completely  than  when 
the  physical  aspect  is  hidden  from  us. 

Now  of  late  men  have  gotten  hold  of  the 
physical  aspect  of  heredity ;  the  inner  physical 
basis  for  diversity  and  for  resemblance  be- 
tween organisms.  We  find  that  there  is  a 


10  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

visible  physical  apparatus  in  which  a  great 
number  of  minute  particles  present  the  phys- 
ical aspects  of  the  qualities  which  human 
beings  show.  We  discover  that  as  these 
particles  are  shifted  and  sorted,  so  in  exactly 
the  same  way  are  the  qualities  of  the  organ- 
isms —  the  later  physical  and  mental  quali- 
ties of  individual  —  shifted  and  sorted.  We 
do  not  yet  know  all  the  details  of  the  relations 
between  the  two  sets  of  things  —  but  we  do 
know  that. 

Now,  we  find  when  we  study  these  things 
that  nature  has  worked  out  a  most  ingenious 
and  efficient  device  for  getting  all  the  diver- 
sities possible  between  children ;  for  ^o  shift- 
ing and  assorting  the  characters  that  no  two 
individuals  will  get  the  same  set.  Looking  at 
the  physical  aspects  —  the  material  particles 
which  correspond  to  the  qualities  of  the 
individual  -  -  we  find  that  the  device  is  sdme- 
thing  as  follows :  All  the  characters  —  the 
particles  —  possessed  by  any  person  are  ar- 
ranged in  a  set  of  small  loop-like  strings, 
24  in  number.  These  24  strings  are  readily 
visible ;  they  look  somewhat  like  tiny  strings 
of  beads.  When  a  new  individual  is  to  be 
produced,  these  24  strings  —  each  represent- 
ing a  diverse  set  of  characteristics  —  separate 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          11 

into  two  groups  of  12  strings  each ;  one  of 
these  two  sets  of  12  goes  into  the  new  individ- 
ual. This  division  into  two  sets  takes  place 
in  such  a  way  that  a  different  set  of  12,  a 
different  combination  —  is  given  to  practi- 
cally every  different  new  individual.  This 
set  of  12  from  one  parent  is  then  united  with 
another  set  of  12,  forming  another  combina- 
tion, coming  from  the  other  parent.  No  two 
of  these  unions  unite  the  same  two  sets  of 
characteristics.  A  more  efficient  device  for 
preventing  the  occurrence  of  two  individuals 
alike  in  fundamental  uaijire^could  hardly  be 
imagined.  All  the  steps  in  the  process  are 
visible  and  can  be  studied  in  detail ;  we  can 
apply  arithmetic  to  the  matter  and  figure  out 
at  least  the  minimum  number  of  diverse  com- 
binations that  may  be  produced  by  any  two 
parents.  In  man,  with  the  24  diverse  sets 
of  characters,  any  single  individual  may  pro- 
duce 4096  different  combinations  of  charac- 
ters; and  the  number  producible  by  two 
given  parents  runs  up  to  more  than  500,000. 
Any  of  these  combinations  is  equally  likely 
to  appear;  that  is,  children  of  any  of  these 
thousands  of  different  characteristics  might 
be  born  to  a  given  pair  of  parents.  But  as 
of  course  only  half  a  dozen  or  so  are  actually 


12  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

realized,  there  is  no  chance  for  two  alike,1 
and  no  one  in  the  world  can  predict  the  nature 
of  the  few  children  that  come  into  existence. 

I  wish  to  emphasize  a  bit  this  last  statement. 
Men  of  science  are  very  naturally  so  inclined 
to  emphasize  what  we  know  and  what  we  can 
predict  as  a  result  of  our  scientific  knowl- 
edge, that  they  sometimes  forget  to  emphasize 
important  things  that  we  do  not  know  and 
can  not  predict.  And  one  of  the  positive 
results  of  science  —  one  of  the  results  that 
is  permanent  —  is  that  it  is  not  possible  to 
predict  the  combination  of  characteristics 
that  will  be  produced  by  any  two  parents. 
Some  single  points  you  can  indeed  predict  if 
you  know  the  parents  and  grandparents 
sufficiently  well,  —  a  few  things  like  color  of 
eyes  and  hair,  —  but  the  combination  of 
characters  —  even  of  the  physical  ones  — 
cannot  be  predicted ;  and  as  for  the  mental 
characters,  which  depend  on  the  interaction 
of  many  factors,  —  prediction  of  these  is 
quite  out  of  the  question,  save  as  a  matter 

1  In  rare  cases,  after  the  new  combination  has  been  formed,  it 
divides  into  two  in  such  a  way  that  each  of  the  particles  divides 
into  two,  and  the  two  halves  are  therefore  just  alike.  These  two  then 
develop  into  what  we  call  identical  twins ;  the  indications  are  that 
these  are  really  as  identical  in  their  fundamental  make-up  as  in  their 
appearance.  These  are  the  exceptions  to  nature's  rule  of  diversity. 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION  13 

of  general  probability.  To  be  able  to  know 
beforehand  from  the  characteristics  of  the 
parents  what  will  be  the  characteristics  of 
the  offspring  has  long  been  one  of  the  dreams 
of  science;  but,  to  paraphrase  the  words  of 
the  poet,  "now  we  know  that  we  never  can 
know"  how  to  do  that,  in  man,  —  for  the 
characteristics  of  the  parent  do  not  determine 
what  combination  of  characters  shall  appear 
in  the  offspring. 

This  fact  appears  to  me  one  of  the  big  ones, 
yet  I  have  never  seen  it  mentioned  in  any 
of  the  numerous  books  on  heredity  in  man. 
It  is  a  fact  that  may  come  as  a  hope  and 
comfort  to  parents  whose  own  lives  have  not 
gone  as  they  wished,  and  who  wonder  if 
heredity  condemns  their  children  to  the  same 
failure  as  themselves.  A  mother,  the  father 
of  whose  children  had  shown  fatal  weaknesses, 
asked  me  if  I  believed  there  was  anything  in 
heredity ;  what  she  meant  to  ask  was  whether 
her  boys  must  be  like  their  father.  There 
is  no  one  on  earth  that  can  predict  what 
combination  of  qualities  will  come  from  the 
union  of  any  two  normal  individuals,  and 
there  never  will  be.  "Who  toiled  a  slave 
may  come  anew  a  prince"  in  the  next  genera- 
tion, —  by  the  working  out  of  recombinations 


14  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

in  heredity.  However  unworthy  we  may  feel 
ourselves  to  be,  we  can  always  hope  for  our 
children  —  with  hopes  based  upon  the  knowl- 
edge that  science  gives.  Knowledge  of  these 
open  possibilities  must  inspire  our  efforts  to 
help  our  children  unfold  what  is  in  them ;  and 
must  lend  an  interest  to  their  progress  that 
any  false  belief  in  a  set  and  iron  law  of  in- 
heritance would  crush  out.  The  literally  in- 
exhaustible variety  of  possibilities  offered  by 
nature  realizes  for  practical  purposes  the  ideal 
of  freedom  of  the  will ;  realizes  in  effect  the 
dream  that  there  are^  unlimited  possibilities 
for  any  individual./C 

Looked  at  from  the  obverse,  this  knowl- 
edge is  equally  important.  Superior  parents 
have  no  guarantee  that  their  children  will  be 
superior.  No  one  can  predict  the  qualities 
that  will  arise  from  their  combination,  for 
millions  of  possibilities  are  equally  open. 
Superior  parents  must  watch  and  help  their 
children  with  the  same  anxious  care  that 
others  must  use. 

Of  course  we  know  that  gifted  parents  are 
much  more  likely  to  produce  gifted  children, 
—  inferior  parents  inferior  children.  But  it 
is  a  matter  of  averages  when  large  numbers  of 
cases  are  considered.  No  parent  has  a  "sure 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          15 

thing"  in  his  children,  either  for  good  or  ill; 
all  may  hope  and  all  must  fear.1 

Nature  then  has  expended  all  her  ingenuity 
in  making  our  little  flock  of  children  as  di- 
verse as  she  possibly  can ;  in  concealing 
within  it  unlimited  possibilities  which  no  one 
can  define  or  predict.  It  sometimes  seems  as 
if  we  their  parents  in  our  process  of  educat- 
ing them  were  attempting  to  root  out  all  these 
diversities,  to  reduce  our  flock  to  a  uniform 
mass.  Now,  there  are  several  things  to  be 
said  as  to  this.  First,  you  can't  do  it,  unless 
your  procedure  is  so  radical  as  to  reduce 
them  all  to  mere  stupidity  or  lifelessness. 
Second,  the  only  way  that  appreciable  prog- 
ress can  be  made  in  the  attempt  is  by  cut- 
ting off,  stunting,  preventing  the  develop- 
ment of  the  special  and  distinctive  qualities 
of  the  individuals.  Unfortunately,  this  can 
be  done  to  a  certain  extent,  but  only  by  a 
process  which  may  rightly  be  compared  with 
the  taking  of  human  life.  But  why  should 
we  desire  to  do  this?  Is  it  not  variety  of 
powers  and  character  that  the  world  needs? 

1  It  should  be  added,  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  that  in  certain 
fully  abnormal  human  beings,  such  as  the  feeble-minded,  it  can  be 
predicted  (in  certain  cases  at  least)  that  the  children  will  be  like  the 
parents  in  that  abnormality.  But  these  cases  do  not  touch  personally 
the  normal  human  beings  that  are  sending  their  children  to  school. 


16  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

Does  not  society  become  steadily  more  and 
more  diversified,  needing  in  every  nook  men 
of  special  powers  ?  Is  not  a  world  of  variety 
intensely  more  interesting,  more  worth  living 
in,  than  a  world  of  monotonous  uniformity? 
Is  it  not  the  variety  of  human  beings  that 

/  makes  life  entertaining  ?  Or  to  put  the  matter 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual  —  how 
will  your  son  become  successful  and  happy 
N  —  by  being  just  like  all  the  other  sheep  in 
the  flock, — or  by  developing  capabilities  that 
others  have  not?  You  can  be  certain  that 
he  starts  with  a  combination  of  qualities 
that  no  one  else  has ;  shall  he  not  have  the 
advantage  of  developing  these  for  all  they 
are  worth  ? 

I  believe  that  all  the  world  would  answer 
this  question  Yes !  And  yet  the  world  has 
developed  a  system  of  education  which, 
until  recently,  and  to  a  considerable  degree 
yet,  tends  to  the  suppression  of  individuality. 
How  did  this  contradiction  arise  ?  Its  source 
I  believe  is  not  wrong  ideals  nor  mere  per- 

-  versity,  but,  as  in  most  cases  of  wrong  action, 
a  misunderstanding  of  the  facts.  Our  schools, 
like  much  else  in  society,  have  been  based  on 
a  false  idea  of  the  meaning  of  democracy ; 
on  the  theory  that  democracy  means  that 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          17 

all  human  beings  are  essentially  alike.  Hence 
a  single  impersonal  method  of  treatment 
was  considered  possible  for  all  cases.  And 
until  lately  science  could  not  speak  the  posi- 
tive word  necessary  to  place  that  theory  with 
the  theory  that  the  earth  is  flat.  But  the 
time  has  come  when  biological  science  can 
assert  positively  that  all  individuals  are 
diverse  in  their  underlying  constitution ; *  and 
can  give  the  detailed  specifications  on  which 
that  assertion  is  based.  Any  system,  be  it 
of  education  or  of  medicine  or  of  politics, 
that  does  not  recognize  this  fundamental 
fact  must  go  into  the  discard.  Democracy, 
correctly  understood  as  the  freedom  of  each 
individual  to  develop  the  peculiar  capabili- 
ties that  are  in  him,  is  precisely  what  educa- 
tion requires. 

The  practical  difficulty  of  handling  a  large 
number  of  children  individually  has  of  course 
aided  powerfully  this  false  theory.  Many  of 
the  faults  of  our  education  are  based  on  no 
theory  whatever,  but  upon  mere  conven- 
ience. 

1  With  the  exception  of  identical  twins,  as  mentioned  in  an  earlier 
note. 


THE   BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

II.     THE    RULES    OF   DEVELOPMENT 

To  sum  up  so  far,  we  must  then  see  in  our 
flock  of  children  a  set  of  diverse  organisms,  — 
each  endowed  by  nature  with  his  own  com- 
bination of  powers ;  each  with  something 
that  no  one  else  possesses.  We  agree  that 
what  we  must  do  is  to  preserve  this  variety ; 
assist  each  child  to  so  develop  as  to  keep  the 
advantage  which  nature  has  given  him,  — 
an  advantage  which  need  not  injure  his 
fellows,  for  their  advantage  lies  in  other  com- 
binations. How  shall  we  proceed  ? 

The  most  important  thing  at  first  is  to 
merely  let  their  endowments  blossom ;  let 
them  unfold  and  show  themselves  for  what 
hey  are,  and  with  a  vigor  that  shall  make 
them  avail.  And  to  do  this  is  to  first  make 
the  children  stout  little  animals,  that  can 
exercise  their  capabilities  with  full  force; 
and  that  can  resist  the  blights  which  hover 
ready  to  pounce  upon  them  from  every  corner 
of  the  world. 

Two  separate  but  related  matters  here 
deserve  consideration : 

(1)  No  matter  what  combination  of  quali- 
ties nature  has  given  to  the  child,  if  he  has 
not  the  force,  the  physical  means,  for  making 
it  avail,  it  will  help  him  little,  for  he  will  be 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          19 

like  the  hapless  speaker  whom  we  have  all 
suffered  under,  —  the  man  who  possibly  has 
xcellent  things  to  say,  but  who  through 
weakness  of  voice  cannot  make  them  carry 
to  his  audience,  so  that  they  are  wasted. 
An  idea  that  flits  through  the  mind  of  a 
weakling  is  nothing  when  compared  with 
that  same  idea  in  the  mind  of  a  man  with 
driving  power ;  in  the  former  it  is  a  shadow, 
in  the  latter  it  may  alter  the  world. 

(2)  Similarly,  no  matter  what  combina- 
tion of  qualities  forms  the  child's  endowment, 
if  these  qualities  do  not  develop ;  if  they 
fall  under  any  one  of  the  blights  that  lurk 
for  them ;  if  the  right  conditions  for  their 
development  are  not  given,  the  endowment 
will  come  to  naught. 

In  most  grown-up  human  beings  many  of 
the  inborn  capabilities  have  been  cut  off; 
much  of  the  native  driving  energy  has  been 
repressed;  much  of  the  natural  delight  in 
work  has  been  destroyed.  The  instinct  of 
workmanship,  as  Veblen  calls  it,  is  one  of  the 
strongest  that  nature  gives  us,  but  many 
human  beings  have  been  so  crippled  that  it 
is  gone,  and  is  replaced  by  a  hatred  for  work. 
Heredity  is,  correctly  considered,  simply  an 
inborn  way  of  developing  and  acting  under 


20  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

certain  conditions ;  if  the  required  conditions 
do  not  appear,  heredity  alone  will  not  give 
you  the  endowment.  What  we  next  seek  then 
is  to  know  the  conditions  which  will  bring 
about  the  unfolding  and  vigorous  development 
of  what  nature  has  concealed  in  the  child. 

In  searching  for  these  conditions,  three 
important  general  rules  of  development  must 
be  our  constant  guides.  These  three  I  may 
call  (1)  the  rule  of  the  gradual  and  spon- 
taneous development  of  the  powers ;  (2)  the 
interdependence  of  the  physical  and  the 
mental;  (3)  the  rule  of  "attention"  in 
physiology  and  development. 

(1)  The  first  rule  is  one  which  grown-up 
human  beings  in  many  respects  ignore,  to 
the  great  injury  of  the  children.  Much  of 
the  power  gained  by  the  young  human  being 
as  the  years  pass  is  not  brought  to  him  pri- 
marily by  training,  by  learning,  by  the  exercise 
of  the  particular  faculty  involved,  —  but  is 
a  mere  consequence  of  unhindered  healthy 
development.  After  the  child  reaches  a  cer- 
tain stage  of  development,  it  can  do  easily 
and  quickly  what  it  could  not  do  even  with 
much  training  at  an  earlier  stage ;  and  this 
silent  unfolding  may  and  should  continue 
throughout  life.  Training  is  even  harmful 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          21 

when  it  comes  earlier  than  the  development 
of  the  power  which  it  tries  to  train ;  it  must 
then  be  classed  with  the  blights  which  cut 
off  the  development  of  the  powers.  To  take 
a  simple  but  familiar  example,  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  train  children  at  an  early  age 
to  do  so  easy  a  thing  as  to  sit  still;  they 
have  not  developed  the  power  of  inhibition 
required  for  this.  Later  they  develop  this 
power  and  have  no  difficulty  in  the  matter, 
even  though  not  trained  to  do  it.  This  is 
a  type  of  what  occurs  throughout  develop- 
ment. This  principle  of  the  gradual  spon- 
taneous development  of  power,  with  its  prac- 
tical consequences,  is  one  which  the  teacher 
or  parent  must  have  continuously  in  mind, 
if  he  is  not  to  be  misled  into  serious  errors. 

The  situation  here  is  much  like  that  which 
gives  rise  to  so  much  sincere  fraud  in  medical 
practice.  We  train  the  child;  we  "keep  him 
at  his  books,"  and  he  develops  power,  —  just 
as  the  doctor  gives  his  patient  drugs,  and  the 
patient  recovers.  But  in  both  cases  it  is 
largely  nature  that  has  done  the  work,  and 
indeed  often  in  spite  of  the  confinement  at 
the  books,  or  of  the  doctor's  drugs;  without 
these  things  indeed  the  development  of  power 
in  the  child  might  have  been  greater,  or  the 


22  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

recovery  of  the  patient  more  rapid.  Of 
course  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  proper 
exercise  of  the  powers,  that  proper  training, 
is  not  necessary  at  the  right  stage ;  with  this 
we  are  to  deal  later.  But  what  we  must 
first  see  to  is  that  the  development  of  the 
powers  shall  take  place  in  a  healthy  way,  so 
that  none  are  blighted,  and  so  that  there  is 
force  behind  all  of  them. 

(2)  And  this  leads  to  our  second  rule  of 
development.  The  outward  evidence  of  the 
natural  and  complete  unfolding  of  the  young 
child  is  given  in  its  physical  development. 
The  practical  rule  which  we  must  follow  is 
to  keep  the  little  creature  growing,  physically 
developing  in  a  healthy  way.  Our  method 
of  education  has  been  largely  influenced  by 
one  of  the  most  malignant  of  the  supersti- 
tions of  the  dark  ages ;  by  the  idea  that 
spiritual  and  intellectual  development  is  in 
conflict  with  physical  development ;  that  the 
elevation  of  the  mental  requires  the  debase- 
ment of  the  physical.  We  know  now,  as 
we  know  any  other  fact  of  science,  that  this 
is  cruelly  false.  The  physical  and  mental 
are  bound  together  in  their  development; 
whatever  metaphysical  theories  we  hold,  they 
are  practically  diverse  aspects  of  one  and  the 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          23 

same  thing;  if  you  change  one  you  change 
the  other;  if  you  blight  one  you  blight  the 
other.  This  does  not  mean  the  dominance 
of  matter  over  mind,  any  more  decidedly  than 
it  means  the  dominance  of  mind  over  matter ; 
this  is  one  of  the  good  rules  that  works  both 
ways.  But  in  the  young  child  we  can  more 
readily  watch  the  physical  side  of  things; 
control  this  more  directly,  so  that  its  condi- 
tion must  be  the  guide ;  when  it  goes  wrong 
all  goes  wrong. 

(3)  Now  to  understand  the  conditions  which 
bring  about  normal  development  of  both  the 
physical  and  the  mental  powers ;  to  under- 
stand the  enemies  and  dangers  to  such  de- 
velopment, we  must  have  in  mind  our  third 
rule  of  development,  —  what  I  shall  call  the 
rule  of  "attention."  If  we  can  get  a  firm 
hold  of  this  principle  at  the  beginning,  it 
will  help  much  in  grasping  a  great  collection 
of  facts  and  relations  which  at  first  view  seem 
to  have  nothing  in  common ;  most  that  we 
shall  have  to  say  about  dangers  and  injuries 
form  examples  of  this  rule.  The  principle 
is  this :  Throughout  development  and  all 
activity,  both  bodily  and  mental,  there  holds 
a  rule  which  is  comparable  to  the  ordinary 
rule  of  attention  in  the  activities  of  the  mind ; 


24  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

only  one  thing  can  be  well  attended  to  at  once. 
(My  expression  of  this  rule  is  analogical, 
unanalyzed  and  not  precise;  but  properly 
understood  it  will  serve  as  a  guide  under 
many  difficult  circumstances.)  It  means  that 
when  the  energy  or  the  "attention"  of  the 
organism  is  thoroughly  engaged  in  one  ac- 
tivity, physical  or  mental,  other  activities  do 
not  prosper.  All  the  details  of  our  lives 
are  examples  of  this,  and  particularly  in  child- 
hood are  the  examples  striking.  When  the 
organism  is  taken  up  with  intense  emotion, 
particularly  painful  emotion,  digestion  stops, 
excretion  stops,  growth  stops ;  respiration 
almost  stops ;  thought  of  everything  else 
stops ;  almost  everything  stops  save  that 
which  ministers  to  the  affair  with  which  this 
emotion  is  connected.1  Intense  pain  has  a 
similar  effect.  So  has  intense  mental  applica- 
tion to  a  particular  subject;  the  "attention" 
of  the  body  as  well  as  of  the  mind  is  taken 
from  everything  else;  digestion,  assimila- 
tion, excretion,  growth,  sensation,  all  are 
cut  down.  The  rule  is  one  that  works 
both  ways,  or  all  ways.  While  deeply  en- 

1  The  intensely  interesting  book  of  Cannon :  Bodily  Changes  in 
Pain,  Hunger,  Fear  and  Rage,  gives  the  full  analysis  of  this  aspect 
of  the  rule. 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          25 

gaged  in  digestion,  we  cannot  think  or 
work  well ;  and  so  of  any  other  operation 
of  our  vegetative  life.  I  have  cited  a 
few  of  the  striking  manifestations  of  this 
rule,  but  it  is  one  that  is  operating  at  all 
times ;  one  that  we  must  think  of  at  all 
times  in  its  relation  to  the  development 
of  the  child.  A  steady  pain  or  discomfort, 
as  from  diseased  teeth  or  poor  eyes,  halts 
the  rest  of  development,  physical  and  mental ; 
and  weakens  the  resistance  to  disease,  in 
proportion  to  its  severity  and  continuity. 
^-Anxiety,  fear,  unhappiness,  whether  result- 
ing from  harshness  of  parent  or  teacher, 
or  from  other  conditions,  have  the  same 
effect ;  mental  and  physical  development  and 
resistance  are  dragged  back.  Any  derange- 
ment of  one  function  takes  the  unconscious 
"attention"  of  the  organism  to  that,  derang- 
ing the  performance  of  other  functions.  Driv- 
ing the  mental  activities  in  directions  for 
which  development  has  not  prepared 
ground  acts  in  the  same  way.  Forcing 
severe  or  too  long-continued  mental  activity 
on  the  young  organism  halts  the  rest  of  its 
mental  and  physical  development  and  lowers 
its  resistance.  These  effects  are  not  slight 
and  hard  to  observe ;  they  are  the  main 


26  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

things  that  decide  health  and  development 
in  the  child.  Almost  all  that  we  have  yet 
to  say  will  be  an  illustration  of  this  principle.1 

III.     THE   CONDITIONS   FOR   DEVELOPMENT 

We  have  then  looked  at  the  endowments 
which  nature  provides  for  the  children,  and 
we  have  reminded  ourselves  of  certain  rules 
of  development.  ^Now  we  come  to  the  third 
matter  that  anyone  who  cultivates  organisms 
must  understand,  —  the  effect  of  the  outward 
conditions  and  of  different  methods  of  treat- 
ment on  development;  how  these  condi- 
tions interact  with  the  endowments,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  rules  of  development. 

We  must  first  deal  briefly  with  a  number  of 
requirements  for  development  which  are  com- 
mon to  the  child  and  all  other  organisms,  — 
the  necessity  for  protection  from  blights; 
the  necessity  for  proper  nutrition ;  the  neces- 
sity for  proper  conditions  of  temperature, 
nd  the  like.  Owing  to  the  much  greater 

mplexity  and  delicacy  of  development  in 

1  An  analysis  into  complex  material,  physiological  processes,  such 
as  is  given  by  Cannon  (/.  c.)>  is  of  course  possible  for  everything  that 
I  have  classed  as  a  manifestation  of  this  rule,  so  that  the  rule  is  per- 
haps a  mere  mnemonic  device  for  holding  together  many  things  that 
might  otherwise  seem  unconnected.  I  believe,  however,  that  it 
serves  this  purpose  well. 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          27 

the  child,  proper  conditions  in  these  respects 
are  still  more  indispensable  than  in  other 
organisms ;  they  are  foundational.  After 
showing  the  relation  of  these  to  our  problem, 
we  will  come  to  the  conditions  which  are 
peculiar  to  the  child. 

Conditions  Common  to  the  Child   and  All 
Other  Organisms. 

1.  Protection  from  Blights.  Our  school 
of  children  consists  of  delicate  organisms  full 
of  budding  capabilities.  As  these  buds  slowly 
open  they  are  tremendously  susceptible  to 
blights.  And  the  world  is  full  of  blights. 
In  the  dark  ages  men  used  to  think  of  the 
spaces  of  the  universe  as  inhabited  by  malig- 
nant beings,  demons,  that  lay  in  wait  for 
human  beings,  pouncing  upon  those  that  were 
unprotected,  and  destroying  or  maiming  them, 
through  what  we  call  diseases ;  the  disease 
was  a  living  creature  and  the  way  to  get  rid 
of  it  was  to  drive  it  out,  as  you  wrould  drive 
out  a  snake  or  a  wolf.  It  is  extraordina 
how  nearly  science  has  forced  us  to  retur 
to  such  a  doctrine.  The  work  is  full  of  living 
beings  that  prey  upon  human  kind  and  partic- 
ularly upon  children,  blasting  their  budding 
powers,  maiming  them  or  stealing  them  away 
as  really  as  the  demons  and  elves  and  goblins 


•ia 

AJ 

ri^^ 


28  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

of  old  were  imagined  to  do ;  only  now  we  call 
them  bacteria.  These  bacterial  blights  de- 
stroy thousands  of  the  human  buds,  —  the 
opening  capabilities,  —  even  when  they  do 
not  destroy  the  child  completely.  We  know 
them  mainly  in  the  so-called  children's  dis- 
eases and  in  other  diseases,  particularly  tuber- 
culosis. These  are  the  most  direct,  the  most 
pitiless,  the  most  swift,  of  the  dangers  which 
our  children  run ;  if  all  our  labor  is  not  to  be 
vain  we  must  watch  and  combat  these  blights. 
But  what  is  the  effect  of  our  usual  method  of 
education  —  our  schools  —  upon  these  bac- 
terial blights?  The  school  might  from  this 
point  of  view  almost  be  characterized  as  a 
device  for  the  exchange  of  blights ;  a  device 
for  delivering  up  all  the  children  to  all  the 
blights  that  attack  any  one  of  them.  We 
all  know  how  this  works  in  the  epidemics 
of  children's  diseases.  The  worst  of  these 
bacterial  demons  is  tuberculosis,  and  the 
best  authorities  tell  us  "that  the  school 
lays  an  astounding  part  in  increasing  the 
liability  to  tuberculosis";1  that  indeed  an 
actual  majority  of  children  contract  tuber- 
culosis before  the  end  of  the  school  period. 
We  must  think  of  these  germs  as  every- 

» Terman,  Hygiene  of  the  School  Child,  p.  130. 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          29 

where,  ready  to  seize  upon  the  unprotected 
child. 

Now,  of  course,  we  cannot  completely 
avoid  this  difficulty,  for  children  must  begin 
some  time,  whatever  the  peril  to  life  or  limb, 
to  mingle  with  their  fellows.  But  what  can 
we  do  to  reduce  the  danger  as  much  ak  pos- 
sible? Of  course  we  shall  follow  the  direc- 
tions of  the  medical  men  as  to  the  best  way 
to  avoid  the  bacteria  which  produce  the 
blights,  and  as  to  staving  off  the  attacks  of 
the  children's  diseases  as  long  as  possible. 
What  I  wish  to  speak  of  is  a  still  more  funda- 
mental matter.  The  chief  thing  we  can  do 
is  to  keep  the  child's  resistance  high.  The 
bacterial  demons  are  everywhere,  but  one 
child  they  blight,  while  another  blossoms. 
The  difference  is  one  of  resistance.  The 
time  will  come  when  medical  practice  will  be 
directed  even  more  to  the  keeping  up  of, 
resistance  than  to  avoiding  or  killing  bac-' 
teria.  But  what  is  resistance,  and  how  is 
it  to  be  kept  high  ?  No  one  I  think  would 
claim  that  men  yet  completely  understand 
resistance.  But  it  is  clear  that  resistance 
is  due  to  an  activity  of  the  body  in  preparing, 
when  attacked  by  enemies,  substances  which 
poison  and  destroy  those  enemies,  without  at 


SO  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

the  same  time  poisoning  the  body  itself. 
And  it  seems  to  be  the  fact  that  for  each 
particular  enemy  the  body  prepares  a  different 
poison,  precisely  fitted  to  destroy  that  enemy 
and  no  other.  Now  this  is  something  that 
chemists  are  quite  unable  to  do  when  working 
consciously,  and  you  can  imagine  that  it  is 
a  most  difficult  and  delicate  operation  for  the 
body.  It  is  peculiarly  subject  to  derange- 
ment in  many  ways,  and  the  cost  of  derange- 
ment is  death  or  severe  injury.  Particularly 
is  it  subject  to  that  general  rule  of  "  attention  " 
which  I  gave  above;  if  the  powers  of  the 
body  are  too  thoroughly  taken  up  with  other 
things ;  if  there  is  continuous  worry,  fear, 
pain,  hunger,  cold,  fatigue,  nervousness,  over- 
excitement,  overstrain  of  any  sort,  —  the 
delicate  task  of  preparing  a  chemical  which 
shall  precisely  resist  the  attacking  germ 
fails ;  the  bud  is  blighted.  What  we  can  do 
'then  to  resist  these  blights  that  lurk  every- 
where, bent  upon  destruction,  is  just  what  we 
must  do  to  provide  in  other  respects  for  a 
complete  and  vigorous  development  of  the 
capabilities  that  lie  in  the  children ;  because 
the  capability  of  resistance  follows  the  same 
rules  as  do  the  other  powers.  The  rest  of 
our  discussion  is  to  be  devoted  to  this  matter 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          31 

of  providing  the  best  conditions  for  all-around 
development. 

2.  Nutrition.  If  an  organism  is  to  develop, 
of  course  it  must  be  fed.  This  seems  so 
much  a  matter  of  course  that  it  comes  as  a  sur- 
prise to  find  how  much  trouble  it  gives  to 
properly  feed  any  kind  of  developing  organ- 
ism that  you  are  trying  to  cultivate.  And 
children  form  no  exception  to  this ;  indeed 
the  problem  of  proper  nutrition  turns  out  to 
be  for  them  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  all. 
Malnutrition,  says  one  recent  authority  on 
school  hygiene,1  "is  responsible  for  more 
degeneracy  than  alcohol.  The  greatest  prob- 
lem throughout  childhood  is  that  of  feed- 
ing." The  child,  at  least  in  civilized  races, 
seems  curiously  inefficient  in  desiring  and 
obtaining  food  of  the  right  kind  and  in  suffi- 
cient  amount,  and  in  properly  assimilating  "| 
such  food  as  it  obtains.  The  food  habits 
and  needs  of  the  young  child  are  rapidly 
changing  as  the  months  pass,  and  it  seems  to 
be  almost  impossible,  both  for  the  child  and 
for  his  parents,  to  keep  the  adjustment  ex- 
act. The  result  is  that  thousands  of  chil- 
dren, perhaps  the  majority,  —  even  including 
great  numbers  from  the  well-to-do  classes,  — 

1  Terman,  Hygiene  of  the  School  Child,  p.  98. 


32  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

are  ill-nourished.  And  the  consequences  are 
most  serious.  Development  is  directly  weak- 
ened or  pushed  into  wrong  channels.  But 
still  more  serious  perhaps  is  the  effect  of 
malnutrition  in  laying  the  child  open  to 
blights  and  to  other  dangers  of  a  similar 
kind.  Without  proper  nutrition  the  delicate 
operations  necessary  for  preparing  resistance 
to  bacteria  cannot  be  carried  out;  the  de- 
fenses fail,  and  infections  and  other  diseases 
are  given  the  opportunity  they  seek;  "mal- 
nutrition is  the  almost  inevitable  forerunner 
of  tuberculosis,  chorea  and  many  other  dis- 
eases," remarks  Terman.1  The  children  in 
which  malnutrition  results  from  lack  of  proper 
food  have  been  greatly  helped  in  many 
schools  by  the  supplying  of  even  simple 
lunches.  But  more  common  perhaps  is  the 
malnutrition  due  to  absent  or  perverted 
appetite,  and  this  cannot  be  remedied  by  sup- 
plying more  or  better  food,  nor  by  urging  or 
forcing  the  child  to  eat  when  it  is  not  hungry. 
For  here  our  principle  of  "  attention  "  comes 
into  operation  in  most  marked  degree.  Appe- 
tite is  precisely  this  "attention"  of  the  organ- 
ism to  food ;  it  is  the  condition  in  which  the 
energies  of  the  body  are  prepared  to  engage 

1  Terman,  I.e.,  p.  99. 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          33 

effectively  in  the  complex  chemical  opera- 
tions of  digesting  and  assimilating  the  food. 
If  the  body  will  not  attend  to  the  food  taken 
—  and  this  is  what  happens  when  food  is  taken 
without  appetite  —  the  chemical  operations 
go  wrong,  and  the  food  changes  to  poison. 
This  "attention"  of  the  body  to  food  we  call  in 
its  outward  and  sensible  manifestation  appe- 
tite, but  it  includes  also  the  complex,  and 
coordinated  "attention"  of  a  host  of  internal 
organs,  going  through  a  most  complicated 
set  of  chemical  and  physical  operations  to 
take  care  of  the  food.  Now  this  complex 
process  is  one  most  delicately  poised ;  most 
easily  interfered  with,  by  the  direction  of 
the  bodily  "attention"  elsewhere.  Strong 
emotions  of  all  sorts,  and  particularly  such 
painful  ones  as  worry,  fear,  anger,  at  once 
stop  the  processes ;  the  details  of  these  matters 
have  lately  been  thoroughly  studied  by  phys- 
iologists ; l  they  are  just  as  precise  and  def- 
inite as  the  fact  that  you  can  no  longer  see 
when  the  eyes  are  shut.  Severe  mental  labor 
has  the  same  effect;  strain  of  any  sort  acts 
in  the  same  way.  Poor  ventilation,  and  lack 

1  See  the  recent  books  of  Cannon,  The  Mechanical  Factonkin 
Digestion  (New  York,  1911),  and  Carlson,  The  Control  of  Hun 
in  Health  and  Disease  (Chicago,  1916). 


34  THE  BIOLOGY  OF   CHILDREN 

of  free  activity,  are  found  to  have  most  marked 
effects  in  decreasing  this  attentiveness  of 
the  body  and  its  organs  to  food.  All  these 
things  thus  strike  at  the  very  foundations  of 
development.  Malnutrition  is  to  be  com- 
bated in  the  same  way  as  the  bacterial 
blights,  —  by  all  the  measures  required  for 
bringing  about  free  and  full  development  of 
all  the  capabilities ;  that  is,  as  we  shall  see, 
by  relief  from  strain ;  by  happy  play ;  by  ac- 
tivity in  the  open,  and  the  like ;  these  things 
we  are  to  deal  with. 

3.  The  External  Conditions.  Besides  nour- 
ishment and  protection  from  blights,  any 
developing  organism  must  have  the  proper 
external  conditions,  particularly  as  to  tem- 
perature, and  the  nature  of  the  medium  — 
air  or  water  —  surrounding  it.  In  the  time 
we  have,  little  can  be  said  on  these,  yet  any 
sketch  of  the  conditions  required  for  develop- 
ment in  the  child  or  any  other  organism 
would  be  most  imperfect  if  the  place  which 
these  fill  was  not  at  least  indicated  by  a  few 
strokes. 

In   any   warm-blooded  organism,  such   as 

is  the  child,  the  maintenance  of  the  correct 

^bodily  temperature  is  an  absolute  necessity 

for  the  proper  carrying  on  of  the  bodily  work, 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          35 

and  there  is  in  each  of  us  a  most  extraor- 
dinary and  elaborate  regulatory  system  for 
keeping  the  temperature  at  just  the  right 
point.  But  this  system  can  work  perfectly 
only  within  certain  limits,  and  we  all  know 
for  ourselves  that  it  is  necessary  to  aid  it  all 
we  can,  by  proper  clothing. 

A  reduction  of  the  bodily  temperature, 
even  though  in  but  a  part  of  the  body,  lowers 
the  efficiency  of  all  the  bodily  operations, 
including  particularly  a  lowering  of  resist- 
ance to  bacteria;  and  also  produces  ap- 
parently a  derangement  of  our  apparatus  for 
regulating  the  bodily  heat.  This  is  why  cold 
is  so  great  an  enemy  to  the  proper  develop- 
ment of  the  child  and  of  other  warm-blooded 
creatures.  One  of  the  classic  experiments 
in  bacteria  was  that  of  Pasteur,  by  which 
he  showed  that  cold  causes  decrease  of  re- 
sistance to  disease  germs,  so  that  organisms 
which  are  cooled  off  are  overcome  by  infections 
that  ordinarily  do  not  .attack  them.  (Fowls 
cooled  below  their  normal  temperature  were 
susceptible  to  anthrax  germs,  though  nor- 
mally they  are  not.)  This  is  apparently 
what  happens  in  the  condition  known  com- 
monly as  a  "cold";  many  sorts  of  blights 
get  a  start  in  this  condition,  when  without  the 


36  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

cold  the  child  would  resist  them.  A  harmful 
idea  has  been  spread  by  the  statements, 
sometimes  made  even  by  medical  men,  that 
"there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  cold,"  for  "what 
we  call  a  cold  is  really  a  bacterial  infection." 
From  such  statements  the  conclusion  has  been 
drawn  that  exposure  to  cold  or  drafts  has 
nothing  to  do  with  this  condition.  There  is 
absolutely  no  ground  for  such  a  conclusion, 
and  experiment  shows  it  to  be  false ;  exposure 
to  cold  does  lower  resistance.  Particularly 
have  experiments  shown  that  cold  renders 
animals  susceptible  to  precisely  such  infec- 
tions of  the  respiratory  tracts  as  are  charac- 
teristic of  "colds."  We  must  therefore  con- 
clude that  the  common  name  of  "colds"  for 
this  condition  was  most  aptly  chosen,  point- 
ing as  it  does  to  one  of  the  chief  dangers 
from  which  such  conditions  of  low  resistance 
arise.  In  such  conditions  we  must  have  ever 
in  mind  the  germs  of  tuberculosis  and  other 
diseases  which  are  hovering  about  to  take 
advantage  of  such  periods  of  low  resistance. 
Keeping  the  bodies  of  children  properly  pro- 
tected and  at  the  normal  temperature  is 
one  of  the  fundamental  things  demanded  for 
development  and  for  proper  carrying  out  of 
all  bodily  functions ;  neglect  of  this  is  bound 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          37 

to  stunt  development  and  at  the  same  time  to 
open  wide  the  doors  to  the  bacterial  blights 
which  destroy  so  many  of  the  budding  capa- 
bilities of  our  flock  of  children. 

Closely  related  to  this  is  the  matter  of 
ventilation.  An  extraordinary  change  in  our 
knowledge  of  ventilation  has  been  brought 
about  by  recent  systematic  experiments  upon 
it.  The  matter  has  perhaps  not  been  cleared 
up,  but  we  have  learned  that  our  old  ideas 
as  to  the  cause  of  the  need  for  ventilation, 
and  of  the  evils  of  poor  ventilation,  were 
quite  mistaken.  It  appears  again  to  be  really 
largely  a  matter  of  temperature,  with  certain 
complications.  The  effects  of  poor  ventila- 
tion are  not  mainly  due  to  the  lack  of  oxygen, 
nor  to  the  increase  of  carbon  dioxide,  nor  to  the 
presence  in  the  air  of  poisons  given  off  by  the 
body.  On  the  contrary,  the  chief  troubles 
in  poor  ventilation  seem  to  be :  (1)  a  high 
and  uniform  temperature ;  (2)  a  high  degree 
of  moisture  in  the  air ;  (3)  lack  of  movement 
of  the  air.  What  is  mainly  needed  is  that 
the  air  shall  move  about  so  as  to  carry  away 
the  warm  moist  layer  next  to  the  skin,  —  at 
the  same  time  giving  a  stimulus  to  the  skin 
through  slight  changes  in  temperature.  If 
this  is  not  done,  the  organism  ceases  to  func- 


38  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

tion  well ;  the  nervous  system  suffers ;  atten- 
tion and  work  become  impossible ;  the  inner 
work  of  the  body  is  attended  to  as  badly 
as  is  the  outer  work;  the  apparatus  for 
regulating  temperature  gets  out  of  order ;  re- 
sistance to  bacteria  is  lowered,  and  the  most 
serious  consequences  may  result.  One  of  the 
most  striking  effects  of  poor  ventilation  is 
its  effect  in  decreasing  appetite;  that  is, 
it  causes  the  body  to  cease  attending  to  nu- 
trition, and  so  attacks  the  very  foundation 
of  resistance  and  of  development.  The  re- 
quired conditions  are  of  course  best  met  in 
the  open  air,  where  the  temperature  is  cor- 
rect ;  and  this  appears  to  be  one  of  the  chief 
grounds  for  the  great  value  of  open-air  schools 
—  though  it  appears  probable  that  in  the  open 
air  there  are  other  factors  which  science  has 
not  yet  gotten  hold  of,  that  conduce  to 
vigorous  natural  development. 

4.  We  must  barely  mention  here  the  im- 
portant matter  of  the  effect  on  development 
of  direct  physical  injuries,  such  as  those  due 
to  bad  conditions  in  the  teeth,  in  the  tonsils, 
or  the  like.  The  underlying  principle  here 
is  the  one  we  have  before  set  forth ;  any  source 
of  pain  or  discomfort,  besides  possibly  pre- 
senting an  opening  for  infection,  diverts  the 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          39 

attention  of  the  growing  organism  from  the 
processes  necessary  for  its  normal  develop- 
ment. We  all  know  that  this  is  true  for 
mental  development ;  we  cannot  "  pay  atten- 
tion" to  things  otherwise  worth  while,  if 
we  are  in  pain.  It  is  equally  true  for  the 
internal  physical  processes.  Any  source  of 
pain  or  irritation  diverts  the  bodily  "atten- 
tion" from  the  processes  of  nutrition,  of 
growth,  of  resistance,  —  bringing  thus  a  host 
of  attendant  evils.  Such  troubles  therefore 
require  immediate  remedy,  if  such  is  possible. 

IV.     EXERCISE    OF    THE    POWERS 

The  things  that  we  have  thus  far  mentioned, 
—  freedom  from  blights,  proper  nutrition, 
proper  temperature  and  other  external  con- 
ditions, —  are  requirements  which  the  child 
has  in  common  with  other  organisms.  But 
we  set  forth  in  the  beginning  that  the  child 
differs  from  other  organisms  in  a  way  that 
enormously  complicates  the  problem  of  cul- 
tivating it,  for  in  the  child  there  are  the  germs 
of  an  immense  number  of  diverse  and  complex 
capabilities,  which  must  all  be  developed  if 
he  is  to  become  a  man  instead  of  a  vegetable. 
Now,  there  can  be  no  complete  development 
of  these  powers  without  their  exercise,  and  as 


40  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

a  matter  of  fact  our  formal  education  is  de- 
voted almost  entirely  to  the  training  of  these 
mental  powers.  The  principles  that  should 
guide  in  this  training  form  the  subject  of  the 
second  lecture  in  this  course,  by  Professor 
Watson.  But  along  with  these  adaptive 
powers,  the  child  must  also  develop  phys- 
ically, just  as  must  a  turnip  or  a  calf.  Ifr 
must  have  a  strong  and  normal  body  which 
can  stand  the  strain  of  life,  or  the  foundation 
is  cut  from  under  its  intellectual  powers. 
And  this  is  what  presents  the  great  difficulty. 
Our  general  principle  of  attention  holds  here 
as  it  does  everywhere;  while  the  organism 
attends  to  one  of  its  capabilities  or  functions, 
it  cannot  attend  to  the  others ;  while  it  is 
attending  to  its  mental  development  the  physi- 
cal functions  are  cut  down.  In  our  eager- 
ness to  develop  its  mental  powers,  we  are 
inclined  to  overdrive  these,  with  the  result 
that  the  vegetative  life  is  interfered  with; 
nutrition  is  weakened,  resistance  is  lowered; 
growth  slowed,  and  the  very  foundations  of 
all  life  are  undermined. 

There  is  no  necessary  conflict  between 
the  mental  and  the  physical ;  on  the  con- 
trary, correct  exercise  of  the  mental  powers 
undoubtedly  assists  physical  development  and 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          41 

conduces  to  health.  But  this  requires  that 
the  two  lines  of  development  should  be  car- 
ried on  in  continued  mutual  interrelation 
and  dependence  —  not  driving  one  regard- 
less of  the  other.  The  problem  for  solution 
is :  How  can  we  carry  on  efficiently  the  culti- 
vation of  the  higher  powers,  without  at  the 
same  time  interfering  with  the  physical  foun- 
dations on  which  they  rest  ?  \ 
Several  points  appear  to  come  clearly  into 
view  here  :  (1)  The  first  is  a  general  relation  :  - 
in  order  to  keep  the  proper  balance,  the  part 
of  physical  activity  in  our  system  of  cultiva- 
tion requires  increase  all  along  the  line. 
Keeping  the  child  sitting  still  for  hours  at  a 
time,  as  we  do  in  our  schools,  —  and  partic- 
ularly when  this  is  done  in  stagnant  air, 
as  is  usually  the  case,  —  has  a  most  marked 
and  immediate  effect  in  decreasing  appetite 
(and  thus  shutting  off  nutrition) ;  in  decreas- 
ing respiration,  in  decreasing  resistance  to 
blights,  in  a  general  suspension  or  slowing 
of  physical  development.  These  are  not 
mere  loose  general  statements ;  precise  facts 
and  figures  showing  these  effects  could  be 
presented  if  time  permitted.  The  sitting 
posture  when  long  continued  is  most  abnormal 
and  harmful  for  the  growing  child ;  to  de- 


42  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

mand  it  for  many  hours  a  day  is  a  crime. 
From  this  point  of  view  the  changes  re- 
quired in  our  system  of  cultivation  are:  more 
activity,  frequent  alterations  of  position,  fre- 
quent periods  of  play  or  of  moving  about; 
more  manual  work  in  place  of  inactive  study. 
But  all  these  matters  are  closely  interlocked 
with  the  points  we  are  to  take  up  next. 

(2)  In  exercising  the  child's  powers,  mental 
as  well  as  physical,  experimentation  has  come 
slowly  and  painfully  to  the  same  result  which 
nature  indicates  most  directly  to  each  one 
of  us.  To  develop  any  capability,  there  must 
be  something  comparable  to  the  appetite 
that  we  find  necessary  for  the  proper  nutri- 
tion of  the  body ;  the  organism  must  have 
an  appetite  for  its  work.  Such  readiness  to 
devote  itself  to  the  work  we  call  interest ;  and 
work  done  in  this  condition  gives  pleasure. 
One  of  the  most  striking  things  in  the  devel- 
opment of  modern  physiology  is  its  gradual 
recognition  of  the  great  value  of  those  pleasur- 
able emotional  states  which  may  be  classified 
together  under  the  abused  word  "joy,"  and 
of  the  harmfulness  of  the  opposite  emotional 
states  —  anxiety,  sorrow,  worry,  fear,  pain, 
and  the  like.  The  condition  of  happiness, 
of  "  joy,"  is  that  in  which  development  is 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          43 

unhindered,  and  flourishing ;  in  which  the 
functions  are  proceeding  harmoniously ;  while 
worry,  fear,  unhappiness,  are  the  marks  of 
the  reverse  condition  of  affairs;  something 
is  blocked  and  is  going  wrong. 

(3)  Yet  such  is  the  complexity  of  our 
problem  that  interest  itself  may  lead  to 
danger.  Too  close  and  long-continued  atten- 
tion to  one  function  —  too  severe  appli- 
cation to  one  task  —  necessarily  leads  to 
injury  and  block  in  the  other  functions ; 
and  also  to  fatigue  and  exhaustion  in  the 
one  carried  to  excess.  The  young  child  can- 
not attend  long  and  intensely  to  anything, 
no  matter  how  interesting,  without  injury. 
We  have  all  heard  the  saying  of  the 
psychologist,  that  the  dull  and  uninterest- 
ing teacher  is  a  necessity  in  our  schools,  for 
the  children  could  not  possibly  stand  atten- 
tion to  vividly  interesting  teaching  for  the 
whole  school  day.  Close  continuous  atten- 
tion is  a  most  exhausting  activity;  children 
take  refuge  from  the  impossible  strain  by  the 
frequent  spells  of  inattention  that  so  per- 
plex the  conscientious  teacher;  by  a  secret 
diversion  of  their  thoughts  to  play,  or  by  mere 
vacuity  of  mind.  We  ought  to  recognize 
frankly  this  fact  in  the  physiology  of  child- 


44  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

hood  by  shortening  the  periods  of  work  along 
any  particular  line;  by  suitable  alternations 
of  work  with  play  or  repose.  I  hope  that  in 
our  lecture  by  the  psychologist  we  shall  have 
something  bearing  on  this  point. 

The  difficulties  and  dangers  are  a  hundred- 
fold multiplied  when  we  try  to  drive  the  child 
into  activities  for  which  at  the  stage  of  de- 
velopment which  it  has  reached  it  is  not  pre- 
pared, and  for  which  it  can  therefore  have 
no  interest;  or  when  we  try  to  force  long 
periods  of  activity  upon  budding  powers  that 
can  stand  but  slight  exercise  for  a  few  moments. 
We  must  remember  our  principle  of  the 
gradual  development  of  the  powers ;  some 
powers  are  ready  for  exercise  when  others 
are  not,  and  only  harm  comes  from  trying  to 
drive  into  activity  those  not  ready. 

This  driving  of  the  powers  beyond  what 
they  are  prepared  for  leads  to  the  most  serious 
difficulties,  particularly  if  the  child  is  very 
conscientious  or  nervous,  and  so  aids  in  driv- 
ing itself.  Forced  into  this  one  channel, 
the  bodily  energy  stops  attending  to  its  other 
duties.  Appetite  disappears  j  the  body  no 
longer  can  attend  properly  to  nutrition ;  the 
chemical  processes  of  the  body  get  into  con- 
fusion; poisons  are  produced  instead  of  pro- 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          45 

tective  substances  ;  resistance  is  broken  down  ; 
the  bacterial  blights  gain  a  footing;  the 
nervous  system  functions  badly.  The  begin- 
nings of  such  troubles  are  shown  in  the  twitch- 
ings  of  the  face  or  limbs  that  are  so  common. 
We  hardly  realize  how  close  we  keep  our 
children  in  school  to  this  precipice  of  over- 
strain ;  many  of  us  see  even  the  manifest 
symptoms  appear  without  realizing  what 
they  mean. 

Indeed,  I  believe  that  few  of  us  really  grasp 
the  part  played  by  strain  in  the  life  of  human 
beings.  It  is  strain  that  makes  men  arid 
women  hate  their  work,  instead  of  loving  it, 
as  is  natural.  It  is  this  that  disgusts  the 
young  human  being  with  the  activities  in 
which  at  first  it  was  fiercely  interested.  It 
is  strain  that  drives  humanity  to  some  of  its 
most  disastrous  practices.  It  is  now  well 
recognized  that  the  immediate  physiological 
effect  of  alcohol  is  to  release  from  strain  and 
repression,  and  the  obsession  of  humanity 
for  alcohol  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they  will 
have  that  relief  at  all  costs.  The  use  of  to- 
bacco again  is  due  to  its  temporary  easing  of 
strain.  It  is  this  demand  for  relief  from 
strain  that  leads  to  orgies  of  various  sorts, 
in  its  minor  aspects  to  outbreaks  of  profanity ; 


46  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

in  more  extreme  cases  to  the  tendency  to 
"go  on  a  spree"  at  intervals.  All  these 
matters  have  been  elaborated  recently  in 
an  interesting  work  by  Patrick.1 

In  childhood  the  harm  resulting  from  strain 
is  enormously  multiplied,  since  it  cuts  off 
in  the  bud  the  development  of  powers  which 
after  their  unfolding  and  extension  would 
form  a  great  part  of  its  life.  The  child 
must  be  protected  from  such  overstrain  at  all 
costs. 

There  is  one  method  of  the  exercise  of 
powers  that  is  almost  free  from  these  dangers, 
and  that  is  what  we  call  play.  For  years 
play  was  looked  upon  merely  as  a  sort  of 
inevitable  waste  of  time  -among  children, 
but  scientific  study  of  the  cultivation  of  these 
organisms  has  shown  that  play  is  in  most 
respects  the  best,  the  ideal  form  of  the  exercise 
of  the  powers.  Particularly  is  this  true  for  the 
younger  children,  but  it  is  in  large  measure 
true  as  they  grow  older.  Play  is  the  activity 
which  their  own  natures  suggest  and  guide ; 
it  is  varied  as  their  diverse  budding  capabili- 
ties require ;  and  when  free  it  is  not  carried 
beyond  the  point  where  one  activity  inter- 

1  G.  T.  W.  Patrick,  The  Psychology  of  Relaxation,  Boston  and 
New  York,  1916. 


47 

feres  with  the  development  of  others.  The 
young  child  perhaps  learns  more  and  develops 
better  through  its  play  than  through  any  other 
form  of  activity.  Opportunity  for  varied 
play  under  healthful  outward  conditions  is 
beyond  doubt  the  chief  need  of  children ;  com- 
parative study  of  the  mental  and  physical  devel- 
opment of  children  to  whom  full  opportunity 
for  such  play  is  given  shows  striking  superior- 
ity, as  compared  with  children  to  whom  such 
opportunities  are  denied. 

Of  course  under  the  conditions  in  which 
we  live  it  becomes  necessary  to  direct  many 
of  the  activities  of  the  young,  and  these  di- 
rected activities  we  call  work  or  study.  But 
at  this  point  I  begin  to  trench  upon  the  field 
of  the  psychologist ;  discretion  warns  me  to 
leave  the  discussion  of  this  matter  to  him. 
I  could  indeed  present  certain  notions  of  my 
own,  but  they  would  lack  the  basis  which  I 
hope  I  may  claim  for  my  discussion  thus 
far,  so  that  I  refrain. 

In  conclusion,  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at 
our  present  system  of  cultivation,  —  the 
school ' —  in  relation  to  these  biological  needs 
that  I  have  tried  to  set  forth.  What  is  the 
usual  effect  of  the  typical  school  on  the 
development  of  our  organisms? 


48  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 

A  summary  of  the  effects,  taken  from 
some  sober  standard  textbook  of  school  hy- 
giene, presents  a  startling  list  of  evils.  Such 
a  summary  of  course  deals  with  the  average 
results;  the  usual  ones.  It  is  something  as 
follows : 

Entrance  to  school  stops  or  slows  the 
growth  of  the  child.  Its  sedentary  life,  bad 
air  and  mental  strain,  destroys  or  weakens 
the  appetite,  and  decreases  the  respiration. 
Actual  counts  show  a  decrease  in  the  number 
of  red  blood  corpuscles,  on  which  respiration 
depends.  Hence  the  chemical  processes  of 
the  body  become  disarranged ;  malnutrition 
with  all  its  attendant  evils  comes  into  view. 
Resistance  is  lowered ;  the  bacterial  blights 
are  given  an  opportunity.  Study  shows  that 
all  sorts  of  morbid  states  increase  greatly  as 
the  children  progress  further  in  school ;  head- 
aches, nose  bleed,  «ye  troubles,  insomnia  and 
other  nervous  disorders  become  commoner; 
tuberculosis  increases.  Further,  by  continued 
repression  of  many  of  the  powers,  and  by 
forcing  activity  in  powers  not  yet  ready, 
strain  is  brought  about ;  spontaneity  is  done 
away  with ;  interest  in  work  is  destroyed ; 
the  instinct  of  workmanship  rooted  out,  hate 
for  work  cultivated  in  place  of  love  for  it. 


IN  RELATION  TO  EDUCATION          49 

No  one  maintains  that  these  things  happen 
to  all  children,  but  that  there  is  a  tendency 
toward  such  results  no  one  will  deny.  No 
one  will  maintain  that  these  are  all  that  the 
school  does;  every  one  will  admit,  on  the 
contrary,  that  the  good  done  by  the  school  is 
greater  than  all  this  evil.  We  cannot  leave 
our  children  uninstructed.  But  the  perti- 
nent question  is  —  Is  there  any  necessity  for 
these  evil  effects  along  with  the  good  ones  ? 

The  question  must  be  answered  —  No ! 
The  good  can  be  done  without  the  evil. 
Schools  already  exist  in  which  most  or  all  of 
the  evils  have  been  done  away  with.  If 
accounts  are  to  be  trusted,  in  some  of  the  open 
air  schools  the  health  and  development  contin- 
ually improve  as  compared  with  children  not 
in  school ;  at  the  same  time  they  make  better 
intellectual  progress.  Schools  are  now  carried 
on  where  individuality  and  spontaneity  are 
cultivated,  not  repressed ;  where  strain  is  not 
allowed  to  play  its  fearful  part ;  where  love  for 
work,  not  hatred  of  it,  is  developed.  The 
movement  for  increased  activity  in  schools; 
for  greater  opportunity  for  play ;  for  shorten- 
ing of  the  hours  of  sedentary  labor,  is  tremen- 
dously improving  schools  in  the  more  ad- 
vanced communities.  Time  does  not  permit 


50  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  CHILDREN 


of  these.     But  the  conditions  are 
•  ss  ;    on  the  contrary,  there  is  full 

knowreoge  available  for  correction  of  the 
evil  condtions  wherever  they  exist  ;  all  that 
is  required  is  that  people  shall  realize  that  the 
conditions  are  bad,  and  shall  act  to  change 
them  ;  shall  be  willing  to  spend  the  money  to 
change  them.  The  great  obstacle  to  better 
conditions  is  not  that  no  one  knows  how 
to  make  them  better  ;  it  is  rather  a  failure  to 
realize  that  the  conditions  are  bad  and  could 
be  changed  :  perhaps  also  the  fact  that  schools 
of  the  sort  required  cost  more  than  the  old- 
fashioned  sort.  But  it  is  ourselves  in  the 
next  generation  that  are  at  stake;  what  is 
cost,  compared  to  making  our  next  selves 
healthful,  efficient  and  happy  ! 


PRACTICAL  AND  THEORETICAL 
PROBLEMS  IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABITS 


BY 

JOHN  B.  WATSON 

JOHN   HOPKINS   UNIVERSITY 


PRACTICAL  AND  THEORETICAL 
PROBLEMS  IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT 

Mr.  Chairman,  Ladies,  and  Gentlemen : 

I  sometimes  feel  that  the  laboratory  man 
makes  a  mistake  when  he  emerges  from  the 
four  walls  which  usually  surround  him  to 
report  his  findings  to  those  who  have  most  to 
do  with  the  practical  problems  of  life.  And 
yet  however  badly  he  may  do  it  I  am  con- 
vinced that  at  least  the  investigator  himself 
profits  by  being  afforded  the  opportunity  to 
put  his  results  before  representative  and 
interested  gatherings.  After  all,  it  is  such 
occasions  as  this  that  determine  which  groups 
of  scientific  data  are  worthy  to*  live  and 
which  should  be  returned  to  the  laboratory 
for  further  work  and  elaboration. 

SOME    GENERAL    CONSIDERATIONS 

Most  of  our  biological  and  psychological 
problems  now  center  in  the  processes  of 
growth  and  development  in  particular  organ- 
isms, and  especially  around  the  methods  of 

53 


54    PRACTICAL,   THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

predicting,  controlling,  and  regulating  such  de- 
velopment. The  theory  that  I  have  advo- 
cated for  many  years  is  that  psychology,  when 
all  is  said  and  done,  is  a  study  in  behavior; 

that  the  problem  of  the  schoolroom  and  of  the 
laboratory  is  to  find  out  what  an  individual 
can  instinctively  do,  what  he  can  be  trained  to 
do,  and  the  methods  which  will  lead  him  most 
easily  and  quickly  to  do  both  those  things 
which  society  demands  of  him  and  the  things 

^vhich  he  alone  as  an  individual  can  do. 
Behavior  is  thus  the  central  problem. 
Thought  can  be  safely  left  to  take  care  of  itself 
when  safe  methods  of  regulating  behavior 
can  be  obtained.  What  a  man  thinks  is  only 
a  reflection  of  what  he  does.  This  seems  like 
a  rather  radical  statement,  but  you  will 
admit  with  me  that  society's  estimate  of 
character  is  based  upon  objective  factors; 
namely,  upon  what  deeds  the  individual  does 
during  the  brief  span  of  his  life.  \  The  goal 
the  psychologist  should  strive  for  is  to  so 
familiarize  himself  with  processes  that  govern 
behavior  or  conduct  that :  (1)  given  the  oppor- 
tunity to  observe  what  an  individual  is  doing 
he  can  predict  the  situations  or  factors  which 
have  led  to  that  line  of  conduct,  and  (2)  on 
the  other  hand,  if  it  is  demanded  by  society 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  55 

that  a  given  line  of  conduct  is  desirable,  the 
psychologist  should  be  able  with  some  cer- 
tainty to  arrange  the  situation  or  factors  which 
will  lead  the  individual  most  quickly  and  with 
the  least  expenditure  of  effort  to  perform  that 
act.  The  point  of  view  which  I  have  thus 
given  in  the  barest  outline  is  the  essence  of 
behaviorism  or  behavioristic  psychology. 
This  branch  of  psychology  teaches  that  a  man 
is  the  sum  of  his  instincts  and  his  habits. 
Since  instincts  and  habits  are  thus  all  impor- 
tant, it  is  in  these  fields  that  behaviorism  finds 
most  of  its  problems.  I  venture  to-night  to 
bring  to  your  attention  some  of  the  experimen- 
tal results  which  we  are  in  the  process  of  obtain- 
ing, some  which  we  hope  to  obtain,  and  some 
which  we  have  already  been  able  to  obtain. 
Without  further  preface  I  invite  you  to  follow 
me  for  a  time  into  the  behavior  laboratories. 

THE   FEASIBILITY   OF   STUDYING   INSTINCT  AND 
EMOTION   IN   INFANTS 

After  having  devoted  some  fifteen  years  to 
the  study  of  the  instinctive  reactions  in 
animals,  it  occurred  to  the  members  of  our 
laboratory  that  it  might  be  well  to  look  over 
the  field  of  human  instincts  and  emotions  to 
see  whether  in  our  opinion  psychologists  and 


56    PRACTICAL,   THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

students  of  education  had  enough  experi- 
mental data  in  this  fundamental  realm  to 
afford  a  safe  basis  for  guiding  and  shaping  the 
child's  career  along  vocational  and  individ- 
ualistic lines.  After  our  survey  of  this  litera- 
ture we  came  to  the  conclusion  that  our  actual 
knowledge  in  this  most  important  field  is 
extremely  meager.  Probably  not  more  than 
six  or  eight  children  have  been  studied  with 
any  degree  of  care  from  birth  to  the  age  of 
five  or  six  years,  and  yet  it  is  in  this  period 
that  the  lines  of  conduct  are  laid  down  which 
inevitably  shape  the  child's  relations  to  its 
future  environment.  Most  of  these  studies 
have  been  carried  out  by  parents,  or  by  other 
interested  relatives.  It  is  hard  for  such 
interested  individuals  to  assume  the  right 
attitude.  They  are  used  to  observing  the 
behavior  of  adult  individuals  and  conse- 
quently read  into  the  actions  of  the  child, 
factors  which  belong  only  to  the  activity  of 
the  adult.  (I  am  not  unaware  of  the  great 
work  which  has  been  done  in  the  field  of  the 
juvenile  court ;  for  the  women  delinquents  at 
Bedford  Hills,  etc.  We  are  likely,  though, 
in  our  interest  in  the  darker  side  of  humanity, 
to  forget  the  normal  and  super-normal 
child.)  So  convinced  have  we  become  of 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  57 

•h 

the  importance  of  learning  the  inborn  heredi- 
tary nature  of  the  child  —  its  possibilities 
of  action,  the  native  situations  which  bring 
out  these  actions,  and  the  method  by  which 
these  crude  and  imperfect  responses  can 
be  transformed  into  serviceable  habits — , 
that  we  have  temporarily  given  up  our  work 
upon  animals  and  are  devoting  our  time  and 
energy,  and  a  large  part  of  the  equipment  of 
our  laboratory,  to  the  study  of  the  emotions,  in- 
stincts and  early  habits  of  the  human  infant. 

Before  discussing  any  of  our  experimental 
work  I  should  like  to  say  in  general  that  the 
human  infant  is  not  the  hothouse  plant  that 
it  is  supposed  to  be.  Continued  observation 
by  a  trained  and  sensible  experimenter  is 
feasible  and  does  not  do  the  child  the  slightest 
harm.  We  have  had  several  hundreds  of 
newborn  infants  under  observation  in  our 
laboratory  at  Hopkins.  There  has  never 
been  the  slightest  accident  under  experimenta- 
tion nor  have  the  babies  suffered  the  slightest 
ill  health  from  the  continued  observations. 

While  it  would  be  taking  us  entirely  too 
far  afield  for  me  to  present  very  many  detailed 
statements  of  the  various  problems  which  we 
are  attempting  to  solve  in  this  most  fascinat- 
ing realm,  I  should  like  to  illustrate  our  work 


58    PRACTICAL,   THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

by  giving  some  concrete  cases.  As  is  well 
known,  some  previous  observations  tend  to 
show  that  the  child  at  birth  will  grasp  a  small 
stick  and  cling  to  it,  but  so  far  these  observa- 
tions have  led  to  very  little  experimentation. 
Our  own  work  shows  that  if  the  stick  is  raised 
the  infant  will  cling  to  it  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
time  and  with  greater  or  less  strength.  Some 
of  them,  indeed,  will  cling  to  the  stick  until 
they  are  raised  up  completely  in  the  air  and 
will  hang  on  for  an  appreciable  length  of  time. 
Others  have  not  the  instinct  so  highly  de- 
veloped and  will  let  loose  long  before  they  are 
supporting  their  full  weight.  In  the  photo- 
graphs on  page  59  we  show  the  method  by 
means  of  which  we  register  the  full  amount 
of  the  strength  of  the  pull.  In  the  diagram 
on  page  61  we  show  the  results  of  a  very 
large  number  of  observations.  You  will  see 
from  the  chart  that  most  of  the  children 
during  the  first  twenty  days  of  their  lives  can 
support  their  full  weight  with  either  hand. 
After  a  time,  in  normal  cases,  this  reflex  gives 
way ;  it  is  said  to  disappear.  Later  observa- 
tions show  that  this  reflex  persists  for  the 
first  three  months  of  life  at  least.  Occasion- 
ally we  find  the  instinct  weak  or  lacking. 
In  some  one  hundred  supposedly  normal  cases 


Apparatus  showing  method  by  which  the  strength  of  the  grasping  re- 
flex is  measured.  The  baby  is  laid  in  the  canvas  crib.  The  weight 
of  the  baby  immediately  registers.  The  rod  is  then  put  in  the 
baby's  hand  and  raised.  The  decrease  in  the  weight  registered 
shows  the  strength  of  the  pull. 


Method  in  operation. 


60    PRACTICAL,   THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

we  have  found  two  children  who  did  not 
possess  the  reflex  :  one  was  extremely  fat,  and 
clinging  would  have  been  almost  impossible ; 
no  reason  can  be  assigned  in  the  other  case. 
In  abnormal  cases,  cases  of  malnutrition,  the 
child  has  not  sufficient  strength  to  support  its 
weight.  It  is  just  possible  that  in  feeble- 
mindedness and  in  other  defects  this  instinct 
persists  for  a  much  longer  period  of  time  than 
in  normal  cases.  We  have  by  no  means  fin- 
ished our  study  upon  this  interesting  instinct. 
I  am  interested  for  the  moment  merely  in 
showing  you  what  very  definite  types  of 
experimental  observation  can  be  carried  out 
upon  the  newborn  child. 

The  study  of  this  instinct  alone  is  opening 
up  a  wide  series  of  problems.  For  example, 
we  find  that  the  infants  cling  for  a  longer 
period  of  time  with  one  hand  than  with  the 
other,  thus  giving  opportunity  for  the  study 
of  right-  and  left-handedness  from  infancy, 
something  which  has  not  hitherto  been  at- 
tempted. And  the  observation  of  this  has  led 
us  into  devising  apparatus  by  means  of  which 
the  spontaneous  movements  of  the  two  hands 
can  be  recorded  from  the  birth  of  the  child. 
Along  with  these  studies  of  right-  and  left- 
handedness  there  goes  a  careful  and  system- 


'  taorweram 


<UI  (211  tUI  (2S>  (,f)  ftj  f»"£!£' 


Curve  showing  strength  of  the  grasping  reflex  in  the  right  and  left  hand 
of  infants.  The  vertical  line  shows  the  weight  in  grams,  the  hori- 
zontal line  shows  the  age  in  days. 

(The  apparatus  and  curves  shown  in  these  cuts  were  made  in  collaboration 
with  Dr.  J.  J.  B.  Morgan  of  Princeton  University.  The  total  results  are  as  yet 
unpublished.) 


62    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

atic  record  of  the  way  the  child  has  been 
carried  in  the  uterus.  By  such  methods  we 
hope  shortly  to  attack  the  rather  insistent 
problem  of  handedness.  It  is  not  necessary 
for  me  to  point  out  the  significance  of  deter- 
mining whether  handedness  is  inborn  or 
whether  it  is  really  a  habit.  It  may  possibly 
be  found  to  be  a  habit  which  starts  really 
before  the  birth  of  the  child.  We  know  that 
the  two  hands  are  not  under  equal  constraint 
in  the  uterus.  It  is  a  real  problem  before 
us  to-day  to  know  what  to  do  when  a  left- 
handed  child  enters  school.  If  handedness 
proves  to  be  a  purely  intra-uterine  habit  and  not 
a  fundamental  instinctive  and  cerebral  endow- 
ment, no  serious  consequences  should  follow  the 
early  changing  of  the  habit.  In  the  pursuit  of 
this  line  of  work  we  have  already  stumbled  upon 
some  intra-uterine  habits,  such  as  the  "pre- 
ferred position  "  of  the  head,  methods  of  holding 
arms,  etc.,  all  of  which  may  affect  our  personal 
behavior  and  our  peculiar  type  of  adult  action 
far  more  than  we  have  any  notion  of  at  present. 
,  Along  with  these  more  detailed  studies  we 
are  attempting  to  work  over  systematically 
the  whole  field  of  the  early  emotional  reactions 
of  the  child.  In  regard  to  infantile  emotions, 
I  may  say  that,  after  a  good  deal  of  observa- 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  63 

tion,  we  find  some  grounds  for  the  conclusion 
that  in  one  way  we  have  greatly  overempha- 
sized the  number  of  original  emotional  re- 
actions. I  have  been  struck  by  their  absence 
and  simplicity  rather  than  by  their  profusion 
and  complexity.  This  does  not  seem  to  square 
with  the  multiplicity  of  emotional  responses 
in  adult  life,  but  I  shall  try  to  show  later  that 
the  contradiction  is  only  apparent.  We  are 
inclined  now  to  believe  that  the  fundamental 
emotional  reactions  can  be  grouped  under 
three  general  divisions : 

(1)  Those  connected  with  fear. 

(2)  Those  connected  with  rage. 

(3)  Those  connected  with  what,  for  lack  of 
a  better  term,  we  may  call  joy  or  love. 

These  at  least  deserve  the  name  of  major 
emotions.  Whether  or  not  other  types  of  emo- 
tional reactions  are  present  we  cannot  yet  deter- 
mine. Let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  orig- 
inal situations  or  stimuli  which  call  them  out. 

Fear.  What  stimulus  apart  from  all  train- 
ing will  call  out  fear  responses ;  what  are  those 
responses ;  and  how  early  may  they  be  called 
out  ?  The  principal  situations  which  call  out 
fear  responses  are  as  follows :  (1)  To  sud- 
denly remove  from  the  infant  all  means  of 
support,  as  when  one  drops  it  from  the  hand 


64    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

to  be  caught  by  an  assistant.  (In  the  experi- 
ment the  child  is  held  over  a  bed  upon  which 
has  been  placed  a  soft  feather  pillow.)  (2)  By 
loud  sounds.  (3)  Occasionally  when  an  infant 
is  just  falling  asleep  the  sudden  pulling  of  the 
blanket  upon  which  it  is  lying  will  produce 
the  fear  response.  (4)  Finally,  again,  when 
the  child  has  just  fallen  asleep  or  is  just  ready 
to  awaken  a  sudden  push  or  a  slight  shake  is 
an  adequate  stimulus.  The  responses  are  a 
sudden  catching  of  the  breath,  clutching 
randomly  with  the  hands  (the  grasping  reflex 
invariably  appearing  when  the  child  is  dropped) , 
blinking  of  the  eyelids,  puckering  of  the  lips, 
then  crying;  in  older  children,  flight  and 
hiding.  In  regard  to  the  age  at  which  fear 
responses  first  appear  I  can  state  with  some 
sureness  that  with  few  exceptions  the  above 
mentioned  group  of  reactions  appear  at  birth. 
It  is  often  stated  that  children  are  instinctively 
afraid  in  the  dark.  While  we  shall  advance 
our  opinion  with  the  greatest  caution,  we 
have  not  so  far  been  able  to  gather  any  evi- 
dence to  this  effect.  When  such  reactions  to 
darkness  appear  they  are'  due  to  other  causes ; 
darkness  comes  to  be  associated  with  absence 
of  customary  stimulation,  with  noises,  etc. 
From  time  immemorial  children  have  been 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  65 

"scared"  in  the  dark,  either  unintentionally 
or  as  a  means  of  controlling  them  (this  is 
especially  true  of  children  raised  in  the  South) . 
In  other  words,  fear,  in  situations  other  than 
the  above,  is  due  to  bad  training.  Children 
thus  learn  to  fear,  through  mishaps  of  training 
not  always  under  the  control  of  the  parents, 
many  things  which  they  should  not  fear. 
Probably  my  own  fear  in  the  dark  has  made 
me  particularly  interested  in  this  problem. 
My  reactions  in  the  dark  are  chaotic  and  more 
or  less  infantile.  I  determined  to  rear  my 
two  children  carefully  in  this  respect,  and  for 
four  or  five  years  they  never  hesitated  to  enter 
an  unlighted  room  nor  complained  about 
being  left  in  the  dark.  Unfortunately,  while 
my  wife  was  out  for  a  short  time  one  evening, 
a  sudden  thunder  storm  came  up ;  and  for 
months  there  was  great  reluctance  on  the 
part  of  the  children  to  being  left  in  the  dark, 
and  there  was  exceeding  great  fear  at  a 
threatened  thunder  storm.  That  there  are 
possibly  other  situations  which  originally  and 
apart  from  all  training  call  out  fear  reactions 
is  quite  within  the  realm  of  probabilities. 

Rage.  In  a  similar  way  the  question  arises 
as  to  what  is  the  original  situation  which 
brings  out  the  activities  seen  in  rage.  Obser- 


66    PRACTICAL,   THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

vations  seem  to  show  that  the  hampering  of 
the  infant's  movements  is  the  factor  which 
apart  from  all  training  brings  out  the  move- 
ments characterized  as  rage.  If  the  face  or 
head  is  held,  crying  results,  quickly  followed 
by  screaming.  The  body  stiffens  and  fairly 
well  coordinated  slashing  or  striking  move- 
ments of  the  hands  and  arms  result ;  the  feet 
and  legs  are  drawn  up  and  down ;  the  breath 
is  held  until  the  child's  face  is  flushed.  In 
older  children  the  slashing  movements  of  the 
arms  and  legs  are  better  coordinated  and 
appear  as  kicking,  slapping,  biting,  pushing, 
etc.  These  reactions  continue  until  the  irritat- 
ing situation  is  removed,  and  sometimes  do 
not  cease  then.  Almost  any  child  from  birth 
can  be  thrown  into  a  rage  if  its  arms  are  held 
tightly  to  its  sides :  oftentimes  even  if  the 
elbow  joint  is  clamped  tightly  with  the  finger 
the  responses  appear :  at  times  just  the  plac- 
ing of  the  head  between  cotton  pads  will 
produce  them.  Even  the  best-natured  child 
shows  rage  if  its  nose  is  held  for  a  few  seconds. 
Joy  or  Love.1  The  original  stimuli  for 
bringing  out  the  earliest  manifestations  of  this 

1  For  a  more  detailed  statement  of  the  stimuli  and  responses  con- 
nected with  this  emotion,  see  Emotional  Reactions  and  Psychological 
Experimentation,  by  John  B.  Watson  and  J.  J.  B.  Morgan,  Am. 
Jr.  Psychology,  April,  1917,  pp.  163-175. 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  67 

emotion  seem  to  be  as  follows  :  gentle  stroking 
and  soft  tickling  of  the  infant's  body,  patting, 
gentle  rocking,  turning  upon  the  stomach 
across  the  attendant's  knee,  etc.  The  re- 
sponse varies :  if  the  infant  is  crying,  crying 
ceases  and  a  smile  may  appear;  finally  a 
laugh,  and  extension  of  the  arms.  In  older 
children  and  in  adults  this  emotion,  due  both 
to  instinctive  and  habit  factors,  has  an 
extremely  wide  range  of  expression.  The 
original  responses  are  very  hard  to  observe  in 
very  young  children.  But  certainly  from 
seventy  days  on  they  are  very  easy  to  observe. 

While  I  wish  to  emphasize  again  that  these 
three  types  of  emotional  expression  probably 
do  not  exhaust  the  child's  repertoire,  yet  I  feel 
that  they  are  more  fundamental  than  any 
others  we  are  likely  to  come  across.  When 
these  emotions  go  wrong  or  are  poorly  con- 
trolled, we  find  the  very  greatest  difficulty  in 
starting  and  controlling  that  enormous  body 
of  habits  which  must  be  formed  by  every 
child.  v 

Recent  work  in  physiology  tends  to  bear  me 
out  in  the  contention  that  these  three  types 
of  reactions  are  of  vital  importance.  It  has 
been  fairly  conclusively  shown  that  they  are 
intimately  connected  with  the  functioning  of 


68    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

the  glands  of  internal  secretion,  for  example, 
the  adrenals,  the  thyroids,  etc. 


I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  the  early  manifestations  of  the  emotions 
because  the  whole  subject  of  the  infant's 
emotions  has  hitherto  been  neglected  by 
psychologists,  by  parents  and  by  teachers. 
The  psychopathologist  is  the  only  investigator 
who  has  made  any  considerable  use  of  this  in 
his  work.  Our  own  experimental  work  is 
leading  us  more  and  more  toward  the  view 
that  emotions  are  not  useless  things  put  here 
by  some  unkind  fate  merely  to  disturb  the 
even  tenor  of  our  ways,  but  that  when  properly 
controlled  they  can  be  made  to  serve  practical 
;iises.  I  think  they  can  be  made  to  serve  as 
incentives  or  drives  to  many  types  of  action. 
We  stumbled  only  recently  upon  a  good 
illustration  of  this  view.  In  testing  the 
grasping  reflex  in  infants  already  referred  to 
we  found  that  in  very  many  cases  the  child 
could  not  at  first  support  its  full  weight,  but 
if  by  hampering  its  movements  we  could  produce 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  69 

rage,  the  muscular  strength  suddenly  increased 
-^  and  the  child  would  immediately  support  its 
whole  weight,  and  in  other  cases  could  sustain 
its  weight  for  a  much  longer  period  of  time.  A 
possible  explanation  of  this  has  been  advanced 
by  Dr.  Cannon  of  the  physiological  laboratory 
of  Harvard  University.  In  the  primary  emo- 
tions certain  internal  glandular  secretions  are 
set  free  which  tend  to  wash  out  fatigue  prod- 
ucts from  the  muscles  and  to  increase  the 
amount  of  food  for  the  muscles,  etc.  Hence, 
when  in  the  throes  of  the  major  emotions,  we 
do  actually  possess  greater  muscular  strength 
and  endurance  than  at  other  times.  I  shall 
not  be  so  bold  as  to  suggest  this  procedure  as 
a  safe  one  to  follow  in  the  schoolroom,  but  it 
does  illustrate  the  point  that  emotions  when 
properly  used  can  be  made  to  serve  us  rather 
than  to  destroy  us. 

This  illustration,  narrow  as  is  its  applica- 
tion, serves  to  force  the  question  upon  us  :  Is 
there  any  experimental  method  now  at  hand 
for  the  utilization  and  control  of  the  emotions  ? 
Suppose  we  try  to  formulate  just  what  we 
should  like  to  do  with  the  emotions.  (1) 
Many  of  the  tasks  which  the  child  has  to  do 
are  intrinsically  unstimulating,  and  yet  such 
tasks  must  be  learned.  Furthermore,  in  learn- 


70    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

ing  them  great  endurance  is  often  called  for. 
Now  if  emotions  do  furnish  a  "drive"  and  do 

-. 

give  increased  endurance.,  our  problem  would 
be  solved  if  we  could  in  some  way  make  the 
unstimulating  task  call  out  emotional  activ- 
ity. (2)  Again  we  find  many  children  whose 
emotional  life  has  been  warped  by  improper 
training.  Many  objects  and  situations  call 
out  emotional  activity  where  emotional  activ- 
ity is  neither  called  for  nor  needed.  Our 
problem  in  (1)  above  calls  for  the  attachment 
of  an  emotion,  while  in  (2)  above  it  calls  for 
the  detachment  or  breaking  up  of  an  emotional 
response.  Stated  more  generally,  then,  our 
quest  is  for  a  method  whereby  we  can  both 
attach  emotions  to  situations  at  will  and 
similarly  detach  them  from  situations  where 
they  are  not  useful.  I  have  not  time  at  my 
disposal  to  go  very  far  into  the  means  by  which 
such  attachments  and  detachments  can  be 
brought  about.  Indeed,  experimentation  has 
not  gone  far  enough  to  warrant  any  general 
presentation  of  a  method.  I  cannot,  however, 
resist  the  temptation  to  point  out  that  the 
i  conditioned  reflex  method  will  possibly  give 
us  the  solution.  This  method  is  a  new  de- 
velopment in  objective  psychology  which  has 
not  had  time  to  enter  into  the  schoolroom, 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  71 

but  it  is  now  one  of  the  central  topics  of 
discussion  and  experimentation  in  psychology. 
It  has  possibilities  of  wide  application  to 
schoolroom  problems.  I  can  only  briefly  de- 
scribe it.  If  our  finger  is  suddenly  pricked 
or  shocked  with  an  electric  current,  the  finger 
draws  back  immediately  —  there  appears  a 
defensive  reflex.  Now  a  gentle  sound,  say 
that  of  a  tuning  fork,  will  not  call  out  such 
defensive  reflex  of  the  finger.  But  if  an 
experimenter  sounds  the  fork  and  pricks  the 
subject's  finger  simultaneously  on  several  occa- 
sions, the  sound  alone  will  in  time  come  to 
cause  the  finger  to  jerk  back. 

In  this  same  way  certain  objects  and  situa- 
tions in  our  daily  life  which  originally  have 
nothing  to  do  with  emotions  come  later  to 
stir  them  up  by  the  process  of  substitution. 
An  interesting  example  of  this  is  seen  in  the 
lightning  flash.  Many  of  us  show  fear  re- 
actions to  flashes  of  lightning.  I  have  never 
seen  a  child  show  these  reactions  even  to 
flashes  of  sunlight  in  a  dark  room.  Loud 
noises,  however,  will  produce  the  fear  reac- 
tions even  in  very  young  children.  The  flash 
of  lightning  is  usually  followed  immediately 
by  thunder.  Hence  in  a  short  time  we  begin 
to  react  to  the  flash  of  lightning  as  we  would 


72    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

to  the  thunder.  A  stimulus  which  originally 
produced  no  reaction  except  a  closure  of  the 
eyes  now  produces  an  extremely  powerful 
reaction.  The  conditioned  reflex  thus  serves 
to  explain  why  it  is  that  although  the  number 
of  original  emotions  is  very  small,  they  still 
play,  through  habit  ramifications,  such  an 
enormous  role  in  adult  life.  Suppose  there 
are  originally  only  a  few  situations  which  will 
call  out  rage  in  me  as  an  infant,  for  example, 
constraining  my  movements,  holding  my 
nose,  etc.  In  a  short  time  the  mere  sight  of 
an  individual  who  holds  me  badly  or  hampers 
my  movements  will  set  off  the  emotional 
reaction.  Finally,  more  and  more  remote 
stimuli  serve  to  set  off  the  movements.  In  a 
similar  way  many  thousands  of  objects  and 
situations  which  originally  had  no  intrinsic 
value  for  the  arousing  of  our  major  emotions 
come  finally  to  possess  that  power. 

You  may  think  that  I  am  setting  up  a 
distinction  without  a  difference,  but  I  assure 
you  I  am  not :  if  we  do  possess,  as  is  usually 
supposed,  many  hundreds  of  emotions,  all  of 
which  are  instinctively  grounded,  we  might 
very  well  despair  of  attempting  to  regulate  or 
control  them  and  to  eradicate  the  wrong  ones. 
But  according  to  the  view  I  have  advanced 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  73 

it  is  due  to  environmental  causes,  that  is,  to 
habit  formation,  that  so  many  objects  come 
to  call  out  emotional  reactions.  If  habit  thus 
plays  the  most  important  role  in  the  attach- 
ment of  the  emotions,  it  lies  easily  within  our 
control  to  perfect  and  regulate  and  reshape 
and  use  practically  the  emotional  life  of  the 
individual.  My  view  throws  a  still  greater 
burden  upon  the  already  heavily  burdened 
parent  and  teacher  and  less  upon  heredity. 
But  even  so  I  think  most  of  you  will  welcome 
any  view  which  will  put  this  important  field 
under  our  control. 

In  order  that  you  may  not  think  I  am  over- 
stating the  case  in  regard  to  the  early  age  at 
which  such  shifts  in  emotional  responses  may  oc- 
cur, I  shall  give  one  or  two  specific  cases  chosen 
at  random  from  a  much  larger  number.  In  very 
young  infants,  far  too  young  to  have  formed 
any  extra-uterine  habits  with  their  hands 
(some  as  young  as  five  to  seven  hours) ,  I  have 
tried  several  experiments  of  the  following  kind  : 
As  I  have  pointed  out,  infants  cry  or  become 
enraged  when  the  head  is  held.  In  one  of  my 
experiments  when  testing  whether  coordinated 
eye  movements  are  present  from  birth,  it  was 
necessary  to  turn  out  the  light  and  then  hold 
the  infant's  head  in  a  truly  vertical  position  to 


74    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

see  if  its  eyes  would  follow  a  faint  experimental 
light.  In  a  very  short  time  the  infant  began 
to  cry  as  soon  as  the  light  was  turned  out  and 
before  the  head  was  touched.  In  another  experi- 
ment while  testing  the  grasping  reflex  on  an 
eighty -seven  day  old  child  it  was  necessary  to 
lay  the  child  on  a  couch.  When  the  mother 
first  laid  it  down,  it  smiled  and  babbled.  I 
then  tested  its  grasping  reflex,  which  threw 
it  into  a  rage.  The  mother  then  picked  it  up 
and  soothed  it  and  once  more  made  it  smile. 
Then  when  she  laid  it  down  it  immediately 
began  to  struggle  and  cry,  and  long  before  I 
came  near  with  the  rod  to  make  another  test. 
I  have  tried  many  such  experiments  with  the 
same  results,  and  I  have  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion, possibly  without  sufficient  experimental 
data,  that  the  first  few  years  are  the  all- 
important  ones  for  shaping  the  emotional  life 
of  the  child.  We  have  hardly  given  this 
matter  a  thought  in  our  educational  systems 
or  even  in  our  home  life.  We  have  centralized 
on  teaching  the  child  proper  conventional 
habits  of  study  and  conduct  while  neglecting 
almost  entirely  its  emotional  training.  We 
look  upon  the  infant  before  it  begins  to  crawl 
and  play  with  objects  as  an  animal  of  a  some- 
what mysterious  and  little  understood  nature, 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  75 

or  else  we  consider  it  a  plaything  upon  which 
we  may  shower  our  own  too  exuberant  emo- 
tional life.  In  general,  we  too  often  misshape 
its  emotional  life  by  forcing  upon  it  too  many 
exciting  emotional  attachments  and  even 
'  harmful  ones,  such  as  fears,  rages,  etc.  In  so 
far  as  I  have  learned  anything  from  my  work 
on  infants  and  very  young  children  I  should  say 
that  it  shows,  first,  that  parents,  and,  second, 
the  early  grade  teachers,  equally  must  share 
the  responsibility  for  making  or  marring  the 
emotional  life  of  the  average  child.  We  can 
only  gradually  educate  the  general  run  of 
parents  in  this  point  of  view,  but  we  can  more 
rapidly  improve  matters  by  making  the  posi- 
tions of  the  early  grade  teachers  the  most 
desirable  and  the  best  paid  ones  in  our  schools. 
When  this  has  been  done  we  must  next  secure 
exceptional  teachers  for  those  grades.  If 
modern  conditions  would  permit  it,  we  should 
like  to  see  these  early  grades  given  over  to 
genuine  students  of  child  psychology  —  men 
and  women  who  have  specialized  in  psychol- 
ogy and  psychopathology  and  who  have  made 
actual  observations  upon  infant  and  child  life. 
If  the  early  grades  were  manned  by  these 
widely  trained  specialists  we  could  be  sure  that 
many  of  the  mishaps  to  the  emotions  due  to 


76    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

home  training  could  be  corrected,  and  we  could 
certainly  be  sure  that  from  their  entrance  into 
the  school  system  of  our  country  no  further 
mistakes  would  occur. 

My  remarks  may  seem  to  throw  criticism 
upon  the  grade  teachers  who  are  already  nobly 
doing  their  best.  I  have  no  wish  to  cast 
stones,  but  I  do  wish  to  decry  the  tendency  in 
our  American  schools  to  think  that  any  teacher 
is  good  enough  to  teach  young  children.  As  a 
result  of  this  tendency  we  find  all  too  often 
grade  teachers  being  recruited  from  the  ranks 
of  high  school  graduates,  from  inexperienced 
normal  school  graduates,  and  in  some  places 
at  least  even  from  among  relatives  of  school 
officials  who  are  graduates  from  nowhere. 

These  highly  trained  specialists  of  the  early 
grades  could  aid  America's  professional  and 
economic  life  in  another  way.  Vocational 
training  is  looming  large  upon  the  educational 
horizon.  A  good  deal  of  it  is  crass  and  super- 
ficial. We  know  far  too  little  of  the  bents  and 
trends  of  childish  activity.  In  order  to  put 
this  work  on  solid  ground  the  individuals  who 
come  in  contact  with  the  child  must  be  trained 
to  observe  these  bents  and  to  devise  situations 
in  which  such  bents  and  vocation  tendencies 
may  appear. 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  77 

THE  NEED  OF  AN  EXPERIMENTAL  NURSERY  FOR 
THE  STUDY  AND  CONTROL  OF  INSTINCTS, 
EMOTIONS  AND  EARLY  HABITS  OF  INFANTS 

I  see  no  way  of  gaining  the  information  we 
so  much  desire  except  by  the  use  of  slow  and 
intense  experimental  methods.  We  have  been 
trying  an  easy  way  to  find  out  how  to  shape 
development  —  that  of  making  superficial  and 
incidental  examination  of  the  children,  of 
sending  out  questionaries,  and  of  running 
them  through  the  ubiquitous  "mental  tests." 
These  easy  methods  have  profited  us  little 
or  nothing.  At  fourteen  years  of  age,  when 
the  majority  of  children  leave  school,  they 
have  no  measure  of  themselves  and  drift 
into  anything  and  everything  that  offers. 
The  sheltered  college  youth  knows  no  more 
about  his  place  in  life  at  graduation  than 
does  the  less  favored  boy  or  girl  at  fourteen 
years  of  age.  As  a  possible  way  out  of  this 
difficulty  and  out  of  the  many  others  that 
beset  us,  I  suggest  the  establishment  of  an 
experimental  nursery  where  fifteen  to  twenty 
children  can  be  brought  up  during  the  first 
five  years  of  life.  These  children  should  be 
kept  under  strict  experimental  conditions. 
Naturally  the  first  things  to  provide  are 


78    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

adequate  housing,  attention  from  well-trained 
nurses,  and  a  physician's  care.  The  child's 
activities,  however,  should  be  under  the  hourly 
observation  of  two  or  three  well-trained  psy- 
chologists who  have  had  preliminary  train- 
ing in  animal  experimentation  and  a  good 
grounding  in  psychopathology.  The  function 
of  the  nurses  and  the  physician  would  be  that 
of  caring  for  the  physical  comfort  and  develop- 
ment of  the  children.  Their  complete  up- 
bringing during  this  period  should  be  in  the 
hands  of  the  psychologists.  A  wealth  of 
problems  would  be  opened  up  and  most  of 
the  questions  which  now  agitate  us  and  which 
we  settle  by  theory  could  be  answered  by 
experimental  results.  I  should  hope  to  see 
grow  up  from  such  a  nursery  a  fairly  complete 
method  of  evaluating  the  behavior  possibili- 
ties of  children  at,  say,  five  years  of  age.  Not 
tests  of  the  Binet-Simon  type  but  an  experi- 
mental procedure  which  would  give  cross- 
sections  of  habits  already  established,  of 
instincts  and  instinctive  tendencies,  and  of 
emotional  development  and  equipment.  I 
have  something  in  mind  far  more  scientific 
and  far  more  important  than  any  material 
which  can  be  gathered  from  the  use  of  the 
so-called  scales  of  measuring  "intelligence," 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  79 

however  useful  such  scales  may  be.  It  would 
be  strange  indeed  if  the  close  observation  of 
twenty  children  from  birth  to  five  years  of  age 
would  not  revolutionize  the  present  point  of 
view  of  child  life,  if  it  would  not  give  us 
methods  of  determining  instinctive  bents,  of 
experimentally  controlling  emotional  life,  and 
efficient  methods  of  implanting  habit  forma- 
tion. With  such  a  body  of  data  before  us  we 
should  be  prepared  to  turn  those  twenty  chil- 
dren into  the  hands  of  our  highly  competent 
grade  teachers.  We  should  furnish  each  child 
with  a  "reaction  chart"  to  be  placed  in  the 
hands  of  his  first  instructor.  On  this  chart  we 
should  show  the  lines  of  activity  which  the 
child  most  easily  follows,  his  particular  bents, 
his  emotional  tendencies  and  how  to  strengthen 
or  correct  them,  and  the  chief  points  in  the 
systems  of  habits  which  he  had  put  on  during 
the  five  years'  residence  in  the  experimental 
nursery.  With  such  a  guide  before  a  sym- 
pathetic and  properly  trained  grade  teacher 
the  whole  relationship  between  pupil  and 
teacher  would  at  once  be  altered.  The  chil- 
dren would  then  be  looked  upoji  as  individuals, 
each  one  with  a  definite  future  before  him, 
and  the  tendency  would  rapidly  grow  tip  for 
the  teacher  to  regard  each  pupil  as  a  "hopeful " 


80    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

experiment.  At  odd  moments  encourage- 
ment could  be  given  in  this  direction  or  in 
that.  This  would  serve  to  save  our  children 
from  all  being  run  through  the  same  mould. 
All  of  them  probably  must  be  moulded  along 
certain  conventional  lines  —  all  must  be  given 
a  certain  amount  of  mathematical  training, 
training  in  the  use  of  language,  etc.,  but  I  am 
inclined  to  agree  with  Dr.  Abram  Flexner  that 
we  can  easily  overdo  in  the  matter  of  required 
subjects.  We  would  not  attempt  to  prescribe 
just  what  the  child's  curriculum  should  be, 
but  we  do  affirm  with  a  good  deal  of  confi- 
dence that  his  individuality  and  tendencies 
should  determine  in  large  measure  what  we 
should  teach  him. 

You  will  probably  smile  at  my  naivete. 
Why  go  to  such  an  enormous  expense  to  try 
an  experiment  upon  twenty  children  when 
millions  have  to  be  trained?  But  we  must 
consider  that  with  the  enormous  data  and 
with  the  improved  methods  which  we  should 
get  from  this  experimental  nursery,  we  would 
be  in  a  position  to  shape  the  establishment  of 
infant  laboratories  in  every  important  educa- 
tional institution  in  the  country  and  certainly 
in  the  public  school  systems  of  our  large  cities. 
These  laboratories  would  be  at  the  command 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  81 

of  the  parents.  Children  could  be  brought 
in  almost  from  birth  for  periodic  examination 
and  study.  The  mothers  could  be  guided 
and  warned  about  the  way  the  children  were 
tending  to  develop.  The  child's  over-reac- 
tions, wrong  emotional  attachments,  and  the 
lines  along  which  its  habits  were  forming 
^  could  be  pointed  out.  The  mother  would 
thus  get  expert  guidance  and  intelligent  help. 
[I  am  speaking  now  for  the  normal  child,  if 
such  a  thing  exists.]  She  calls  for  expert 
advice  now  from  the  physician  when  she  is  in 
doubt  about  the  child's  health.  The  school 
even  now  forces  her  to  have  her  child  mentally 
tested,  if  retardation  is  suspected.  It  is  then 
often  too  late  for  advice.  Why  not  afford 
her  the  opportunity  of  having  the  instinctive, 
emotional,  and  habit  systems  of  her  normal 
child  gone  over  periodically  so  that  she  may 
receive  at  seasonable  times  advice  in  matters 
which  may  be  as  useful  to  her  as  the  physi- 
cian's counsel  now  is?  But  we  must  study 
child  life  during  this  period  before  we  can 
give  advice  of  a  scientific  character.  Only 
a  charlatan  would  presume  now  to  give 
"expert  advice."  Not  the  least  useful  pur- 
pose of  such  infant  laboratories  would  be  the 
possibility  of  training  our  public  school 


82    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

teachers  in  the  accurate  observation  of  infant 
and  child  life.  I  venture  to  say  that  if  I  were 
to  take  a  thousand  teachers  chosen  at  random 
from  schools  in  the  United  States  and  put 
a  two  months'  old  infant  in  front  of  them  and 
ask  them  to  experiment  upon  it  for  a  few 
days  and  then  to  write  down  the  important 
things  they  saw,  not  five  of  them  would  know 
how  to  go  about  the  task.  And  yet  we  expect 
our  teachers  to  look  after  the  instinctive 
bents  and  original  characteristics  of  our 
children  !  This  is  not  their  fault  but  the  fault 
of  the  institutions  which  train  them  and  of  a 
society  which  permits  them  to  teach  instead  of 
to  guide  the  child's  own  development.  They 
have  had  no  opportunity  to  observe  child- 
life  in  the  milking.  But  in  my  interest  in 
this  possibly  visionary  scheme  I  have  been 
neglecting  some  other  matters  which  I  wish 
to  put  before  you. 

SOME  EXPERIMENTS  TO  DETERMINE  THE  LAWS 
OF   HABIT   FORMATION 

Equally  as  important  as  this  early  scrutiny 
of  instinct  and  emotional  training  are  the 
methods  of  initiating,  correcting,  and  con- 
trolling the  growth  of  habits  after  entrance 
into  school.  Let  us  not  criticise  the  schools 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  83 

unduly  for  being  conservative  and  loth  to 
change  their  methods  of  implanting  habits. 
I  think  though  we  can  criticise  any  school 
system  which  is  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
present  system  of  school  instruction  is  ade- 
quate and  that  it  cannot  be  improved  upon. 
Even  the  most  satisfied  school  official  must 
admit  that  our  school  curricula  are  now  based 
upon  conventions,  and  not  upon  science. 
Even  the  number  of  minutes  to  be  devoted 
to  a  given  subject  and  the  number  of  days 
per  week  that  each  subject  must  receive  atten- 
tion, as  well  as  the  number  of  subjects  that 
must  be  taught  simultaneously,  are  heritages 
from  early  times.  These  conventions  may 
turn  out  to  be  not  wholly  bad.  Certainly  I 
should  not  advocate  giving  them  up  until 
science  has  something  better  to  offer.  I  am 
merely  imploring  the  schools  to  remain  in  an 
expectant  attitude  and  to  watch  for  our  labora- 
tory results  and  to  seize  upon  those  which 
look  promising.  It  has  not  been  possible  for 
us  so  far  to  find  an  opportunity  for  making 
an  extensive  study  of  habit  formation  in 
children  because  of  the  well-grounded  reluc- 
tance one  meets  in  trying  out  experiments  of  a 
radical  kind  upon  the  human  species.  It  has 
been  a  case  literally  of  trying  these  things 


84    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

out  upon  the  "dog,"  or  rather  upon  the  white 
rat !  I  wish  to  present  here  four  of  the  most 
important  conclusions  we  have  arrived  at  in 
our  study  of  habit  formation  and  then  to 
illustrate  these  tentative  formulations  by 
citing  the  experimental  data  upon  which  they 
are  based ;  they  are  : 

(1)  The  law  of  diminishing  returns  from 
practice.     Within  certain  limits  the  less  the 
frequency  of  practice  the  more  efficient  is  each 
practice  period. 

(2)  The  less  the  number  of  habits  formed 
simultaneously,  the  more  rapid  is  the  rise  of 
any  given  habit.     At  the  same  time  the  first 
law  is  valid  here,  too. 

(3)  Again,  within  certain  limits,  the  younger 
the  animal,  the  more  rapidly  will  the  habit 
be  formed.     This  law  is  to  be  taken  with  some 
reservation. 

(4)  The  higher  the  incentive  to  the  forma- 
tion of  a  habit  and  the  more  uniformly  this 
incentive    is   maintained,    the   more   rapidly 
and   the  more  uniformly   will  the  habit   be 
formed.     Under   such   conditions   the   curve 
illustrating   the    growth    of    the    habit    will 
rise    steadily.     Whenever   the   incentive   de- 
creases   in    intensity    (oftentimes    with    the 
actual  onset  of  boredom)  there  appear  pauses 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  85 

and  resting  places  in  the  curve  (places  of  no 
improvement). 

Let  us  turn  to  the  experimental  justification 
of  these  conclusions. 

1.    The   Law    of  Diminishing    Returns  from 
Practice 

A  few  years  ago  we  knew  nothing  concern- 
ing the  way  in  which  practice  periods  are 
related  to  learning.  Scattering  and  incon- 
clusive experiments  had  been  carried  out  in 
the  schoolroom  but  the  number  of  cases 
tested  was  too  few  for  safe  conclusions.  In 
order  to  get  a  sufficient  number  of  subjects 
whose  daily  life  was  under  our  control  we 
used  white  rats.1  Our  methods  were  as 
follows :  we  took  one  group  of  animals  and 
allowed  each  member  to  solve  a  specific 
problem  once  per  day;  the  members  of  a 
second  group  were  allowed  to  solve  the  prob- 
lem three  times  per  day;  and  of  a  third 
group,  five  times  per  day.  As  soon  as  an 
animal  could  solve  the  problem  —  which  was 
to  open  a  simple  latch  box  in  two  seconds 
without  making  an  error  —  it  was  considered 
to  have  learned  the  problem,  and  its  total 

1  These  experiments  were  carried  out  by  Dr.  J.  L.  Ulrich.  See 
Behavior  Monographs,  No.  10. 


86    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

number  of  trials  before  reaching  this  stage  of 
perfection  was  counted.  This  procedure  was 
adopted  for  all  the  groups  at  work.  The 
results  came  out  in  a  rather  clear-cut  and 
surprising  way :  those  animals  having  one 
trial  per  day  required  very  much  fewer  trials 
than  those  having  a  larger  number.  In  other 
words,  given  the  same  amount  of  practice, 
it  is  far  better  to  distribute  that  practice  over 
a  longer  period  of  time  than  to  concentrate  it 
in  a  relatively  short  period  of  time,  if  we  wish 
to  get  the  maximum  efficiency  out  of  each 
practice  period.  These  experiments  were  con- 
tinued further  by  letting  a  group  of  animals 
solve  the  problem  once  on  alternate  days, 
thus  giving  one  day  of  rest  between  practices ; 
and  by  allowing  still  another  group  to  have  a 
two-day  rest  period  between  practices ;  and  a 
third  group  a  three-day  rest  period.  The 
maximum  efficiency  per  practice  was  obtained 
in  that  group  which  had  at  least  one  day  of 
rest  between  practice  periods.  Dr.  Helen 
Hubbert  of  Randolph-Macbn  Woman's  Col- 
lege is  carrying  out  a  similar  experiment  upon 
young  women,  which  likewise  shows  the 
value  of  rest  between  practices.  Her  results 
are  not  yet  published. 

Dr.  Lashley  of  our  laboratory  has  already 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  87 

made  a  somewhat  similar  test  upon  human 
beings.1  He  used  for  this  purpose  the  acquisi- 
tion of  skill  in  archery.  The  archery  ground 
was  set  up  on  the  University  campus.  The 
subjects  were  all  forced  to  shoot  five  hundred 
times ;  in  other  words,  the  total  amount  of 
practice  was  the  same  for  all  groups.  The 
groups  were  all  carefully  selected,  none  of  the 
subjects  having  had  previous  practice  on  the 
English  long  bow  and  all  having  about  the 
same  degree  of  initial  efficiency.  After  each 
shot  was  made,  the  distance  of  the  arrow  from 
the  center  of  the  bull's  eye  was  measured. 
The  subjects  were  thrown  into  the  following 
groups  :  one  group  had  to  shoot  five  times  per 
day ;  another  twelve  times  per  day ;  another 
twenty ;  and  the  fourth  forty.  The  final 
accuracy  of  the  last  twenty-five  shots  was 
chosen  as  a  measure  of  the  amount  of  improve- 
ment which  had  taken  place.  The  results 
strongly  confirm  those  already  reported  for 
the  rat :  the  group  shooting  five  times  a  day 
could  shoot  approximately  twice  to  three, 
times  as  accurately  as  the  group  having  to 
shoot  forty  times  per  day.  There  seems  to 
be  no  question  but  that  this  law  is  universal 
in  its  application. 

1  The  Acquisition  of  Skill  in  Archery.     Publications  of    Carnegie 
Institution  of  Washington,  No.  201,  p.  107. 


88    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

I  think  some  practical  conclusions  may  be 
suggested  from  these  experiments.  In  the 
first  place  they  show  that  we  may  utilize 
isolated  bits  of  time  in  the  schoolroom  (and 
in  the  business  world)  for  getting  our  pupils 
to  acquire  skill  in  directions  which  harmonize 
with  their  bent.  We  may  work  with  the  full 
confidence  that  the  practice  periods  in  these 
isolated  moments  will  yield  splendid  results. 
The  student  ought  to  be  encouraged  to  take 
half  an  hour  each  day,  or  even  one  hour  a 
week,  to  perfect  himself  along  some  particular 
line  towards  which  he  is  especially  attracted 
—  it  may  be  in  the  playing  of  some  musical 
instrument  or  in  the  perfecting  of  skill  in  some 
form  of  sport,  in  typewriting  and  stenography, 
photography,  bookbinding,  drawing,  painting, 
etc.,  hobbies  which  he  may  have  no  time  or 
opportunity  to  ride  during  school  hours.  The 
more  of  such  habits  an  individual  has  at  his 
command,  the  more  safety  valves  he  will  have 
in  time  of  trouble.  If  the  student  properly 
systematizes  his  out  of  school  hours,  he  will 
find  that  he  has  more  time  both  for  work  and 
for  play.  Personal  efficiency  does  not  mean 
that  the  individual  needs  to  become  cold  and 
unlifelike.  It  does  mean  more  satisfactory 
work  and  more  time  for  the  putting  on  of 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  89 

useful  habits  of  work  and  the  equally  useful 
habits  of  play. 

2.  The  Less  the  Number  of  Habits  Formed 
Simultaneously,  the  More  Rapid  is  the  Rise 
of  Any  Given  Habit 

In  a  similar  way  evidence  was  obtained  that 
the  smaller  the  number  of  habits  an  animal  is 
learning  simultaneously,  the  more  rapidly  will 
he  learn  each  of  the  habits.  The  experiments 
were  carried  out  by  a  method  similar  to  the 
above.  We  first  established  a  norm  of  learn- 
ing for  three  problems  by  using  three  different 
groups  of  animals.  Each  group  was  allowed 
to  learn  only  one  problem.  We  then  took 
three  other  groups  and  forced  them  to  learn 
the  same  three  problems  simultaneously.  We 
wished  to  see  whether  law  1  held  here  also. 
Accordingly  we  allowed  one  group  to  solve 
problem  number  1,  once  per  day  and  immedi- 
ately thereafter  problem  number  2,  and  im- 
mediately thereafter  problem  number  3.  The 
second  group  was  forced  to  solve  each  of  the 
three  problems  three  times  per  day ;  the  third 
group  had  to  solve  each  of  them  five  times  per 
day.  Our  results  show  fairly  clearly  that  the 
group  learning  one  problem  at  a  time  could 
learn  more  rapidly  than  any  of  the  above 


90    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

groups  having  to  learn  three  problems  abreast. 
At  the  same  time,  we  got  a  perfect  demonstra- 
tion here  also  of  the  law  of  diminishing  returns. 
The  group  solving  each  of  the  three  problems 
once  per  day  learned  much  more  rapidly  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  number  of  trials  than 
either  of  the  other  two  groups.  So  far  these 
experiments  have  not  been  carried  out  on 
human  beings  in  any  conclusive  way,  but  I 
have  not  the  slightest  doubt  but  that  the 
same  law  will  hold  there  also,  at  least  for 
certain  types  of  habits.  The  question  arises, 
though  :  would  we  have  had  this  interference 
if  our  problems  had  been  different,  or  might 
we  not  indeed  have  found  groups  of  problems 
which  could  be  learned  more  easily  abreast 
than  in  rotation?  Some  very  recent  work 
on  the  human  being  tends  to  support  the  view 
that  we  may  not  only  have  no  interference 
among  acts  which  contain  few  or  no  "identical 
elements"  but  that  we  may  have  actual 
facilitation.  The  search  for  non-conflicting 
and  mutually  facilitating  habits,  if  such  exist, 
must  go  on  until  we  can  be  sure  that  we  have 
the  best  possible  selection  of  studies  to  be 
pursued  simultaneously  in  each  and  every 
grade. 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  91 

3.    The  Younger  the  Animal,  the  More  Rapidly 
will  the  Habit  be  Formed 

These  experiments  have  been  carried  out 
mainly  upon  animals.  One  of  our  students  at 
Hopkins  allowed  nearly  one  hundred  animals 
of  different  ages  to  learn  a  very  complex  maze, 
taking  the  while  an  accurate  record  of  the 
number  of  trials  required  to  master  it.1  The 
animals  were  divided  into  four  groups :  a 
twenty -five  day  old  group,  which  is  the  age  at 
which  they  become  independent  of  the  mother ; 
a  sixty -five  day  old  group,  or  the  age  of  sexual 
maturity ;  a  two  hundred  day  old  group, 
which  might  represent  the  middle  of  adult 
life;  and  a  three  hundred  day  old  group,  to 
represent  the  beginning  of  old  age.  The 
twenty-five  day  old  rats  and  the  sixty-five 
day  old  rats,  which  represent  our  most  youth- 
ful groups,  learned  the  maze  in  approximately 
thirty  trials ;  whereas  the  two  hundred  and 
three  hundred  day  old  animals  required 
nearly  a  third  more  trials  —  about  forty-two. 
The  young  animals  required  about  six  seconds 
for  their  finally  perfected  runs;  the  old 
groups  required  about  ten  seconds.  These 

1  The  Effect  of  Age  on  Habit  Formation.  By  Helen  B.  Hubbert, 
Behavior  Monographs,  No.  11. 


92    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

v 

experiments  show  clearly  two  things :  first, 
that,  as  everyone  has  hitherto  suspected,  the 
young  animals  do  learn  faster  than  the  old 
ones ;  but  in  the  second  place,  that  the  old 
animals  can  learn  very  fast  indeed,  all  things 
considered.  We  have  continued  these  experi- 
ments with  a  few  very  old  animals  and  we 
find  that  animals  even  five  and  six  hundred 
days  old  still  have  the  ability  to  learn  this 
complicated  maze.  I  think  two  things  are 
indicated  from  these  experiments  if  you  will 
permit  me  to  "carry  over"  conclusions  from 
the  animal  world  to  the  human.  In  the  first 
place  they  suggest  that  the  earlier  we  can  get 
a  child  to  work  upon  a  problem,  assuming 
that  he  is  of  the  general  level  to  begin  the 
problem,  the  better  our  results  will  be.  This 
conclusion  is,  I  should  say,  strengthened 
by  the  schoolroom  observations  of  Baldwin, 
namely,  that  those  children  who  enter  school 
a  year  or  two  earlier,  in  general,  maintain 
their  lead  and  consequently  graduate  a  year 
or  two  earlier.  In  these  days  of  economic 
pressure  this  gain  is  not  without  its  signif- 
icance. In  the  second  place,  I  think  these 
experiments  should  give  those  of  us  who  have 
passed  the  first  bloom  of  youth  a  good  deal  of 
hope.  Many  of  us  in  that  too  often  unfor- 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  93 

tunate  condition  say  that  we  do  not  know 
how  to  dance,  to  skate,  and  to  play  games  be- 
cause we  did  not  learn  such  things  when  we 
were  young;  but  this  excuse  is  no  longer 
valid.  We  now  have  experimental  evidence 
to  show  that  the  contention  of  William  James 
concerning  the  non-plasticity  that  is  supposed 
to  go  with  old  age,  which  has  been  so  uni- 
versally accepted,  is  completely  unfounded. 
Any  one  of  us  who  cares  to  put  on  the  highly 
skillful  acts  needed  in  either  work  or  play  can 
do  so  provided  he  is  willing  to  spend  approxi- 
mately a  third  more  time  than  a  youth  would 
have  to  spend  in  acquiring  the  same  acts.  I 
have  been  at  some  pains  to  verify  this  conten- 
tion by  asking  some  of  our  better  musical 
teachers  whether  they  have  ever  had  any 
success  in  teaching,  for  example,  the  pipe 
organ  to  people  who  are  forty  years  of  age  or 
over.  They  tell  me  that  their  success  has 
been  surprising.  One  of  my  friends,  fifty 
years  of  age,  is  at  the  present  time  trying  to 
learn  to  play  the  violin.  If  he  succeeds  in 
acquiring  any  degree  of  skill  upon  this  instru- 
ment, I  should  predict  that  there  is  hardly 
any  line  of  activity  which  will  not  yield  to 
"middle  aged"  effort.  James  puts  the  fixa- 
tion or  crystallization  point  at  thirty.  I  should 


94    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

extend  the  point  indefinitely.  Convention 
has  more  or  less  frowned  at  middle  age  putting 
on  so-called  youthful  habits  :  we  look  askance 
at  a  middle-aged  individual  who  is  trying  to 
learn  such  acts.  We  say  such  a  person  is 
kittenish.  I  should  say  that  here  our  conven- 
tions are  wrong ;  that  middle  age  and  early 
old  age  would  be  much  more  exciting  periods 
for  all  of  us  if  we  would  only  become  willing 
to  scorn  such  conventions  and  dare  to  learn 
whatever  we  please  to  learn.  Fortunately, 
modern  times  show,  apart  from  experimental 
laboratories,  a  rather  pronounced  move  in  the 
right  direction.  This  is  shown  in  the  tend- 
ency of  the  middle-aged  to  learn  the  modern 
dances,  to  drive  their  own  cars,  to  play  golf, 
and,  in  general,  to  add  other  strings  to  their 
bows.  I  have  been  extremely  interested  in 
watching  the  spread  of  the  modern  dances. 
When  these  came  in,  the  older  members  of  the 
community  took  a  rather  scornful  attitude 
on  the  side  lines  and  were  rather  prone  to 
condemn  the  "immorality"  of  such  dances. 
Two  years  saw  a  complete  change  in  this 
respect,  and  now  when  I  go  to  the  cafes  of 
New  York  I  sit  and  watch  with  all  amazement 
the  middle  aged  and  the  aged  giving  no  mean 
exhibition  of  the  fact  that  the  human  race  is 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  95 

never  too  old  to  learn.  Such  revolts  against  a 
playless  and  stereotyped  old  age  ought  to  be 
encouraged  by  using  our  schoolhouses  outside 
of  school  hours  as  places  where  parents  can  be 
taught  to  play. 

4.  The  Higher  the  Incentive  and  the  More 
Uniform  the  Incentive,  the  More  Rapid  and 
Steady  will  be  the  Improvement 

We  owe  the  work  upon  which  this  law  is 
based  to  experiments  which  have  been  carried 
out  in  the  psychological  laboratories.  Long 
ago  Bryan  and  Harter  showed  in  their  studies 
in  telegraphy  that  individuals  working  in  this 
field  very  early  reached  a  certain  stage  of 
development  and  then  ceased  to  improve. 
These  low  levels  of  adjustment  were  due  to 
environmental  conditions.1  Most  of  the 
learners  in  telegraphy  as  soon  as  they  become 
competent  to  send  and  receive  messages  in 
small  stations  cease  to  improve,  in  other  words, 
they  reach  only  the  first  level  of  adjustment 
which  will  just  enable  them  to  hold  a  job. 
They  are  then  on  a  par  with  the  majority  of 
their  group ;  consequently  there  is  no  further 
incentive  or  drive  to  improvement.  The 

1  For  a  summary  of  these  and  related  results,  see  Thorndike, 
Educational  Psychology,  Vol.  2. 


96    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

same  thing  occurs  in  typewriting  and  in 
practically  all  of  the  vocations.  The  great 
mass  of  individuals  takes  the  lowest  level  of 
adjustment  which  will  enable  it  to  earn  a 
living;  and  then  the  environment  ceases  to 
offer  any  adequate  incentive  for  the  continua- 
tion of  practice.  How  can  we  get  a  learner 
away  from  this  low  level  ?  This  is  the  cry  of 
the  business  world  to-day.  It  is  the  cry  of 
the  schoolroom  as  well.  It  has  been  shown 
in  these  experiments  that  if  high  stimulating 
values  can  be  obtained,  the  learning  curve  will 
again  immediately  begin  to  rise.  Curves  of 
animal  learning,  where  the  incentive  is  kept 
high  by  controlling  the  food  and  other  factors, 
show  no  plateaux.  We  might  illustrate  how 
the  addition  of  an  incentive  will  produce  im- 
provement by  a  hypothetical  example  in  the 
field  of  typewriting.  As  soon  as  an  individual 
can  just  take  care  of  an  office  adequately,  say 
at  fifteen  dollars  per  week,  there  comes  a 
slump  in  the  learning.  Now  suppose  that  a 
larger  office  is  willing  to  try  out  this  individ- 
ual's services.  She  goes  there  and  finds  that 
her  work  is  not  so  rapid  nor  so  accurate  as 
that  of  certain  other  girls  in  the  office.  The 
record  of  these  better-paid  girls  serves  as  a 
stimulus  or  drive.  Our  individual  then  gets 


IN  INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  97 

an  added  incentive  and  soon  reaches  a  higher 
level.  Another  period  of  non-improvement 
results,  and  not  until  some  other  incentive  is 
added  will  she  improve.  Suppose  literature 
has  been  put  in  her  hands  which  shows  that 
the  touch  system  of  typewriting  is  more  effi- 
V  cient  than  the  method  she  has  been  using. 
Another  impetus  has  been  given  to  her  work, 
a  better  method  is  employed,  and  improve- 
ment again  results.  Suppose  now  a  prize  is 
offered  for  speed  and  she  enters  the  contest. 
Under  the  emotional  excitement  improvement 
will  again  show  up.  Finally,  world  records 
begin  to  serve  as  a  stimulus  for  improvement ; 
and  we  at  last  find  our  individual  holding  the 
world's  record  for  speed. 

The  business  world  has  to  a  certain  extent 
studied  methods  by  which  it  can  get  this 
added  drive.  The  system  of  profit  sharing  so 
largely  utilized  by  Ford  and  other  manufac- 
turers, the  offering  of  bonuses  or  dividends, 
extra  pay,  etc.,  introduces  emotional  factors 
which  almost  immediately  bring  the  workers  up 
to  much  more  efficient  levels.  Unfortunately 
the  schoolroom  has  neglected  this  important 
element.  A  while  ago  I  referred  to  the  fact 
that  emotional  reactions  put  the  organism  into 
such  a  changed  physiological  condition  that  it 


98    PRACTICAL,  THEORETICAL  PROBLEMS 

can  do  things  which  it  could  not  do  at  other 
times.  Consequently  if  we  could  only  get 
some  way  of  arousing  emotion  at  critical 
places  in  learning  we  would  have  the  solution 
of  our  problem.  I  believe  that  this  can  be 
accomplished  to  some  extent  in  the  school- 
room by  the  selection  of  teachers  who  have 
that  very  definite  gift  of  attaching  to  them- 
selves the  emotional  life  of  the  pupils.  Such 
teachers  can  and  undoubtedly  do  get  the 
added  drive  which  comes  from  emotional 
arousal.  You  may  say  that  this  has  been 
generally  recognized  in  practice.  Possibly 
it  has,  but  the  reason  for  it  has  not  been  under- 
stood and  we  have  not  insisted  upon  it  as  a 
sine  qua  non.  Our  test  of  the  teacher  is  his 
erudition  which  may  or  may  not  go  along  with 
the  ability  to  fix  and  to  hold  the  love  of  the 
child.  For  this  reason  I  should  never  put  the 
untried  and  inexperienced  teacher  in  to  teach 
the  youngest  children,  which  is  now  so  often 
done.  If  the  teachers  are  chosen  with  care, 
such  emotional  attachments  as  I  now  defend 
are  easily  controlled  and  no  evil  consequences 
need  result.  We  have  begun  here,  though, 
to  deal  in  dreams  of  the  future  and  with 
speculations,  and  the  experimenter  has  a  long 
way  to  go  before  he  can  offer  information 


IN   INSTINCT  AND  HABIT  99 

which  will  be  anything  more  than  vaguely 
suggestive. 

May  I  sum  up  in  a  few  words  the  general 
drift  of  my  argument  ?  It  is  this :  the  be- 
havior laboratories  are  working  daily  at 
problems  which  lie  close  to  our  school  systems. 
Would  it  not  be  to  the  advantage  both  of  the 
laboratories  and  of  the  schools  to  stay  some- 
what in  touch  with  each  other;  cannot  the 
schools  of  our  land  be  kept  flexible  in  all 
matters  and  ready  to  try  out  at  least  the  most 
promising  data  which  come  from  the  labora- 
tories ? 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 
CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM 


BY 

ADOLF  MEYER,  M.D. 

JOHNS  HOPKINS   UNIVERSITY 


MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 
CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM 

GREAT  emergencies  create  great  efforts  and 
bring  out  great  minds.  Chicago  with  its 
tremendous  problems  of  amalgamation  and  in- 
tegration of  a  huge  foreign  population,  with 
its  complex  political  and  civic  machinery, 
its  widely  varied  neighborhood  problems,  and 
with  its  tremendous  tasks  of  education,  has 
brought  to  the  front  its  Colonel  Parker,  its 
John  Dewey,  its  Mrs.  Ella  Flagg  Young;  it 
has  given  the  occasion  for  such  magnanimous 
creations  and  developments  as  the  Francis 
Parker  School,  the  University  School,  and 
that  noteworthy  institution  which  aims  to  go 
to  the  root,  of  sad  mishaps  in  the  child  and  in 
the  adolescent,  —  the  institution  so  generously 
and  wisely  made  possible  by  those  who  gave 
the  opportunities  of  work  to  Dr.  Healy. 

A  school  system  and  such  affiliated  organi- 
zations as  Chicago  has  developed  strongly 
draw  one  to  come  and  learn,  and  to  meet 
with  those  vitally  interested,  even  if  the 
occasion  demands  that  he  in  turn  contribute 

103 


104    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

to  the  discussion.  There  is  clearly  a  very 
potent  personal  stimulus  of  my  interest  in 
schools  in  the  fact  that  in  all  my  work  I  am 
constantly  confronted  with  the  question : 
What  has  been  the  share  of  nature  and  of 
nurture,  and  of  home  and  school,  in  the  lives 
of  the  patients  who  form  the  subject  of  my 
medical  work?  My  great  desire  to  learn 
more  through  closer  contact  from  the  many 
workers  whose  life  interest  lies  in  the  shap- 
ing of  the  school  problem  and  my  interest  in 
a  prospective  experiment  with  a  school  as 
a  community  center  account  for  my  yielding 
readily  to  Mrs.  Dummer's  appeal  to  under- 
take a  humble  discussion  of  what  the  psy- 
chopathologist  might  have  to  contribute  to 
a  constructive  consideration  of  the  relation 
of  the  school  to  mental  and  moral  health. 

There  are  periods  when  some  of  our  human 
institutions  are  blindly  accepted  by  tradition  as 
if  they  were  the  revelation  of  immutable  truths; 
and  other  periods  come  when  there  is  debate 
and  a  conviction  of  possibilities  of  growth. 

To  be  sure,  every  human  institution  such  as 
a  school  system  has  to  have  its  frame  of  stable 
and  dependable  organization  if  it  is  to  hold 
its  own  among  the  many  other  factors  mak- 
ing up  organized  civilization.  But,  as  it 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    105 

serves  as  one  of  the  organs  of  the  growing  and 
ever-changing  world  of  mankind,  the  frame 
and  the  structure  as  a  whole  will  always  have 
to  be  more  than  dead  bone,  a  living,  adaptable 
part  of  the  great  biological  and  sociological 
integrations  of  human  beings  into  organized 
communities.  And  success  will  always  be 
judged  by  the  great  criterion  of  the  mental 
and  moral  health  of  its  products. 

To  study  the  school  as  an  organ  of  the 
community  and  to  study  its  possible  share  in 
the  attainment  of  mental  and  moral  health, 
is  no  small  contract.  Such  a  program  sug- 
gests problems  which  I  certainly  do  not  pre- 
tend to  solve  in  an  hour's  talk.  ,  I  must 
limit  myself  to  discussing  what  changes  and 
what  growth  have  occurred  in  my  own  field, 
—  that  of  the  study  of  mind  and  of  mental 
health  problems,  —  matters  that  might  well 
be  of  interest  to  those  who  have  the  fate  and 
shaping  of  a  school  policy  in  their  hands. 
As  such  changes  I  would  mention  : 
1.  The  reaching  out  of  psychiatry  from 
hospital  administration  to  the  study  of  the 
individual  patient,  wherever  found ;  —  and 
the  gain  in  the  relation  of  individual  and 
community  and  their  respective  share  of 
responsibility  for  mental  and  moral  health. 


106    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

2.  A    firmer    recognition   of    the    intrinsic 
unity  of  the  problem  of  all  health,  that  of 
special  organs   and  also   that  of  the  entire 
individual. 

3.  The    development   of   methods    to    get 
useful  inventories  of  the  assets   and   deter- 
mining factors  of  the  lives  of  pupils  and  their 
problems,  and  a  correspondingly  better  prac- 
tical grasp  on  their  management. 

4.  The  advantage  accruing  from  such  study 
as  regards  the  prevention  and  correction  of 
mental  sickness,  and  the  gain,  also,  of  general 
efficiency  and  a  vision  of  natural  lines  of  growth 
and  progress  through  and  in  the  schools. 

THE   BROADENING   OF   PSYCHIATRY 

I  feel  strongly  that  the  educator  and  the 
physician  have  more  and  more  common 
ground  on  account  of  the  great  progress  made 
both  in  the  school  and  in  the  medical  spheres. 
Since  the  days  when  I  took  my  first  plunge 
into  practical  adult  life  in  Chicago  and 
Kankakee,  momentous  transformations  have 
occurred  in  the  lifework  that  I  then  chose. 
From  having  their  main  and  almost  exclusive 
field  in  hospitals  largely  for  committed  pa- 
tients, such  as  that  of  Kankakee,  the  psy- 
chiatric interests  have  broadened  until  one 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    107 

of  our  most  inspiring  activities  is  now 
extra-institutional  work  in  the  community 
and  especially  at  the  point  where  the  individ- 
ual first  enters  community  life  —  the  school. 
Witness  only  the  work  of  your  Society  for 
Mental  Hygiene  and  of  various  dispensaries, 
and  the  growing  amount  of  work  done  for 
child  welfare. 

In  the  last  twenty  years,  a  transformation 
has  also  taken  place  in  the  very  mode  of  ap- 
proach of  the  psychiatrist  and  psychopa- 
thologist  to  his  immediate  task.  I  have  often 
told  of  a  little  experience  I  had  at  Kankakee : 
At  the  autopsy  of  a  patient  who  had  dropped 
dead  after  a  hearty  meal,  I  had  shown  the 
jury  that  the  man  had  succumbed  to  the 
rupture  of  his  diseased  heart  muscle.  The 
foreman  of  the  jury,  a  physician,  satisfied 
with  the  demonstration  of  the  cause  of  death, 
watched  me  examine  the  brain  and  finally 
asked:  "Now,  Doctor,  show  us  what  you 
find  in  the  mind."  I  feel  sure  that  he  thought 
that  our  knowledge  of  the  brain  would  give 
us  the  safest  knowledge  of  the  patient's  mental 
state.  I  had  to  refer  him  for  the  mental  find- 
ings to  the  history  or  life-record  of  the  case, 
which  in  those  days  was  very  meager,  partly 
owing  to  the  small  number  of  physicians  in 


108    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

proportion  to  the  number  of  patients,  and 
partly  because  the  physicians  had  no  con- 
fidence in  the  life-record  as  a  scientific  fact. 
Notwithstanding  the  growth  of  our  knowl- 
edge of  brains,  we  have  since  learned  more 
than  ever  to  express  the  facts  of  mind  much 
more  definitely  in  accounts  of  the  personality, 
and  much  more  in  terms  of  actual  life  than 
in  fanciful  descriptions  of  brains  in  terms  of 
what  I  call  neurologizing  tautologies.  Psy- 
chology has  learned  to  make  the  biography 
its  very  frame  and  starting  point,  the  record 
of  the  connected  and  coherent  activity  of  the 
individual  and  the  study  of  the  essential  parts 
of  the  life-record  and  its  determining  factors, 
i.e.,  the  things  and  experiences  that  play  a 
r61e  in  shaping  the  life.  Psychology  is  not 
merely  an  ultra-erudite  and  bone-dry  labora- 
tory interest  or  a  kind  of  grab -bag  of  myste- 
rious forces  and  tricks  beginning  with  the  sub- 
conscious and  hypnotism,  but  as  Dr.  Watson 
so  ably  illustrated  from  his  own  work-shop, 
a  study  of  actual  observable  processes  cover- 
ing the  whole  range  of  the  individual's  ac- 
tivity from  sleeping  to  the  fullest  waking 
behavior,  such  as  these  processes  of  learning 
and  acquiring  and  using  experiences  —  func- 
tions with  a  clearly  biological  foundation. 


CEREBRUM 


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CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    109 

THE   LIFE-CHART 

To-day  we  study  mental  activity  and  be- 
havior, i.e.,  the  topic  of  psychology,  as  the 
function  and  activity  of  the  unified  organism, 
just  as  we  view  physiology  as  the  science 
studying  the  behavior  and  function  of  the 
various  organs  and  parts.  The  study  of  the 
total  behavior  of  the  individual  and  its  integra- 
tion as  it  hangs  together  as  part  of  a  life-history 
of  a  personality  in  distinction  from  the  life- 
history  of  a  single  organ,  that  is  our  great 
interest  in  psychology  and  psychopathology. 
No  words  of  mine  can  give  you  a  more  graphic 
picture  of  the  concreteness  of  what  counts  than 
the  life-chart  —  a  record,  on  the  one  hand,  of 
the  condition  and  of  the  performance  of  the 
various  bodily  functions  and  special  organs,  1 
and  of  the  role  each  of  these  plays  in  shaping  ' 
the  biography  or  life  of  the  person;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  various  experiences  ex- 
pressing the  lines  of  habit-and-resource  for- 
mation constituting  the  accumulated  mass  of 
habits,  memories,  and  the  reactive  resources 
of  the  individual.  The  result  of  this  integra- 
tion is  not  an  abstract  mind  but  a  living  body 
in  action,  a  unified  personality,  an  individual 
with  capacity  for  reflexes  and  instincts  and 


110    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

habits  and  memories  and  imaginative  reactive 
resources. 

A  life  can  be  presented  graphically  as  a 
record  of  the  special  organs  (arbitrarily  repre- 
sented in  the  form  of  a  weight  curve  of  the 
principal  parts),  and  at  the  same  time  as  a 
record  of  total  behavior.  The  interrelation 
of  the  parts  and  the  whole,  as  I  said,  consti- 
tutes a  system  of  integration.  The  plan 
depicts  clearly  the  welding  of  the  parts  into 
an  organism,  and  the  interrelation  of  the  or- 
ganism as  a  whole  with  the  events  and  the  facts 
of  the  outside  world,  in  the  form  of  reac- 
tions of  the  personality  or  individual,  consti- 
tuting the  sum  total  of  the  life-history  of  the 
parts  or  special  functions  as  well  as  of  the 
whole.  Thus  we  can  appreciate  the  fact  that 
the  respiration  has  to  serve  properly  the  total 
need  of  oxygen  and  the  elimination  of  car- 
bon dioxid,  but  the  same  combination  also 
has  to  serve  the  functions  of  voice  and  lan- 
guage production  as  integrated  by  the  nervous 
system ;  and  this  has  to  blend  with  even  the 
larger  needs  and  aims  of  the  total  organism, 
since  most  of  our  thought  is  couched  in  lan- 
guage, forming  an  important  part  of  those  habits 
and  trends  which  we  specify  as  "the  mental 
and  moral  life"  and  its  resources.  Thus  we 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    111 

see  in  thought  and  speech  an  integration  of 
an  organ  simultaneously  serving  simple  phys- 
iological demands  and  also  serving  such  a 
function  as  the  one  I  am  at  present  en- 
gaged in,  in  a  full-fledged  observable  mental 
activity. 

The  great  advantage  of  this  simplification, 
of  viewing  mind  primarily  as  the  adaptive  and 
creative  activity  of  a  biological  organism  in  terms 
of  a  biography  and  record,  is  that  it  gives  us  a 
practical  way  of  putting  forth  our  facts  and 
problems  —  whether  we  try  to  educate  a 
person  or  whether  we  apply  mental  ortho- 
pedics to  the  correction  of  behavior,  whether 
it  be  in  connection  with  any  special  organ  or 
any  special  function,  or  activities  involving 
the  whole  personality.  Moreover,  it  gives  us 
a  valuable  sense  of  proportion  between  what 
counts  in  the  life  and  what  is  purely  inciden- 
tal ;  the  overt  and  demonstrable  life  brought 
out  by  overt  action  and  expression,  and  the 
mere  thoughts ;  the  performance  rather  than 
the  mere  knowledge,  the  result  rather  than  the 
mere  step  to  it. 

THE   BIOLOGICAL,   CONCEPTION   OF   MAN 

Besides  the  practical  emphasis,  the  sim- 
plified scheme  shows  us  human  life  with  its 


112    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 

material  and  spiritual  aspects  as  a  consistent 
whole.  We  are  no  longer  worried  and  con- 
fused by  the  apparent  chasm  between  nature 
and  the  world  of  human  life  and  its  ambi- 
tions, which  seems  to  have  staggered  even 
Huxley  so  that  it  drove  him  into  the  transi- 
tory phase  of  agnosticism  and  doubt  as  to  the 
possibility  of  harmonizing  the  laws  of  nature 
and  of  life  with  the  great  human  world  of  am- 
bitions and  of  dreams  of  perfection  and  ideals, 
the  laws  of  the  mores,  or  ethics,  and  religion. 
As  we  said  before,  a  complex  and  yet  simple 
organization  of  natural  and  creative  forces 
into  actual  living  individuals  is  what  we  have 
to  deal  with  —  an  organization  starting  from 
lowly  origins  but  reaching  as  high  as  its  sup- 
port will  carry ;  the  product  of  a  long  process 
of  growth  and  function,  an  unfolding  of  in- 
stincts and  their  application  and  transforma- 
tion, a  readiness  for  and  attraction  to  many 
experiences  and  performances,  an  evolution 
through  a  wealth  of  reactions  and  capacities 
gradually  wrought  into  habits  and  resources, 
rising  to  full-fledged  individual  and  social  life 
with  its  heights  of  appreciative  and  creative 
attainment.  There  is  but  one  way  to  learn  to 
know  such  an  organism  and  that  is  through 
its  life-history,  the  record  of  past  and  present 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    113 

reactions,   from   which   we   can   foretell   the 
range  of  capacities  of  the  future. 

LANGUAGE  AS  A  GREAT  STEP  OF  PROGRESS  AND 
SOURCE  OF  SERIOUS  EDUCATIONAL  PROBLEMS 

In  comparing  the  simpler  biological  organ- 
isms and  man  in  respect  to  growth  and  educa- 
tion, we  are  at  once  struck  by  a  contrast  which 
is  very  significant  and  which  entails  the  great 
preeminence  of  man  in  the  scale  of  evolution 
but  also  a  great  risk  in  the  sphere  of  health. 
The  development  of  language  and  its  symbols, 
the  development  of  the  silent  language,  and 
language  memory,  and  imagination  in  terms 
of  language,  gives  man  at  once  the  great  priv- 
ilege and  the  great  task  of  maintaining  the 
proper  balance,  so  much  more  difficult  than 
where  life  consists  more  conspicuously  of 
overt  and  direct  activity,  as  in  animals. 

The  ability  to  store  knowledge  in  terms  of 
word-memories  and  principles,  in  terms  of 
written  and  transmitted  doctrine,  creates  the 
human  atmosphere  and  brings  with  it  the 
temptation  to  change  the  system  of  educa- 
tion from  that  of  training  to  one  of  teaching 
and  instructing.  So  great  is  this  temptation 
that  the  traditional  scheme  of  education  has 
limited  itself  almost  exclusively  to  this  one 


114    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

type  of  human  attainment,  and  indeed  there 
are  many  who  would  not  like  to  see  the 
school  do  anything  else;  and  all  this  in  the 
face  of  the  fact  that  our  very  nature  is  a  prod- 
uct of  the  growth  and  nurture  of  an  organ- 
ism in  which  impulse,  instinct  and  differential 
activity  and  performance  make  up  what 
counts  in  the  biography  or  life-record.  Ac- 
tivity is  the  natural  setting  and  very  nature 
of  all  mental  growth.  As  has  been  said, 
"The  laws  of  mental  health  and  of  character 
require  the  completion  of  thought  or  feeling 
by  expression  in  action."  Mere  feeling  and 
thought  and  fancy  which  are  not  brought  to 
the  test  of  action,  to  their  fulfilment  in  action, 
tend  to  become  one  of  the  danger  points  of 
human  nature. 

Even  in  the  prebiological  period  of  human 
thought  as  among  the  Greeks,  the  school 
aimed  at  the  development  of  the  entire  or- 
ganism and  the  development  of  all-round 
fitness  for  adult  life.  Later  the  medieval 
tendency  to  treat  an  abstract  mind  as  an 
entity  by  itself,  and  the  sectarian  tendency 
to  keep  important  aspects  of  life  out  of  the 
curriculum,  tended  to  focus  attention  upon 
but  one  feature  of  the  personality.  When  we 
look  at  biographies,  the  schooling  clearly 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    115 

gives  the  main  setting  to  a  long  series  of  years. 
Even  if  the  ideal  of  the  scheme  of  education 
aimed  mainly  at  knowledge  and  at  the  ac- 
quisition of  the  arts  of  reading  and  writing 
and  arithmetic  and  a  certain  amount  of  his- 
torical, linguistic  and  natural  history  informa- 
tion, the  period  of  school-life  is  the  time 
during  which  the  habits  acquired  in  earlier 
childhood  become  more  definitely  shaped.  Be- 
tween home,  social  environment  and  school, 
the  young  citizen  spends  six,  eight  and  more 
years  to  attain  the  ideal  of  education  of  his 
or  her  generation.  The  traditional  school 
aims  at  conveying  systematized  knowledge, 
the  results  of  centuries  of  human  evolution,  — 
the  paper  money  of  experience,  a  set  of  capaci- 
ties which  a  democracy  must  be  able  to  expect 
of  its  citizens,  and  which  life  at  large  would 
supply  only  very  unsystematically.  For  this 
purpose  the  school  practically  takes  possession 
of  the  child  and  the  adolescent,  and  it  deter- 
mines the  principal  features  of  that  period  of 
life.  Need  we  Bonder  that  it  is  more  and 
more  concerning  itself  with  a  broader  concep- 
tion of  education  than  that  of  mere  "mental 
training"? 


116    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

THE  MODERN   TESTS   OF  A   SCHOOL   SYSTEM 

The  questions  we  might  ask  about  a  school 
system  are :  Can  the  result  be  called  well 
rounded,  making  for  preparedness  for  an  effi- 
cient and  wholesome  thirty  or  forty  or  more 
years  of  adult  life  ?  Does  the  product  of  such 
training  know  what  he  or  she  is  fit  for ;  what 
he  or  she  wants  and  will  try  to  do  as  his  or  her 
share  of  the  work  of  sustenance  and  produc- 
tiveness? Is  the  school  training  in  harmony 
with  our  best  knowledge  of  the  integrated 
human  organism  and  personality :  Does  it 
satisfy  the  principle  that  life  ultimately  be 
judged  in  terms  of  a  biography  of  objective 
achievement  and  that  knowledge  is  merely 
an  incidental  asset  and  telling  only  when  it 
shows  in  effective  or  expressive  activity? 
Does  it  succeed  in  forging  the  natural  assets 
into  power  ?  And  finally,  what  share  can  any 
type  of  school  have  in  favoring  or  damaging 
the  individual  chances  for  mental  and  moral 
health  and  efficiency  ? 

Pa  ton,  in  his  Psychiatry  (pp.  198-199), 
attributes  "the  enormous  increase  of  nervous 
and  mental  diseases,  one  of  the  most  serious 
menaces  to  the  public  welfare,"  to  the  at- 
tempt to  educate  numbers  of  individuals 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    117 

whose  central  nervous  systems  are  func- 
tionally unable  to  withstand  the  strain  im- 
posed upon  them.  He  would  limit  the  ad- 
vantages and  risks  of  education  in  the  public 
schools  to  those  who  have  sound  bodies  and 
sound  minds.  "To  render  it  possible  for 
an  individual  who  is  physically  and  mentally 
unfit  for  the  stress  associated  with  the  effort 
to  undertake  the  acquirement  of  what  is 
termed  a  liberal  education  should  be  regarded 
as  an  offense  against  the  public  health  and 
morality  no  less  culpable  than  if  one  were  to 
deliberately  place  him  in  an  environment 
where  he  is  exposed  to  an  infectious  disease. 
What  particular  form  of  education  is  best 
adapted  to  the  average  child?  How  far 
should  the  negro  be  carried  in  his  schooling? 
Of  what  degree  of  mental  activity  is  woman 
capable  without  impairing  her  physical  vigor  ? 
These  are  not  questions  that  can  be  solved 
by  mere  amateurs,  but  involve  problems  call- 
ing for  the  earnest  consideration  of  those  who 
are  at  least  familiar  with  the  methods  of  inves- 
tigating the  difficulties  connected  with  the 
functional  activity  of  the  central  nervous 
system." 

Here    are    questions   which   we    may    not 
expect  to  answer  to-night,  unless  we  should 


118    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

care  to  risk  becoming  classified  with  the 
amateurs.  But  they  open  our  eyes  to  the 
necessity  of  studying  the  problem  as  far  as 
facts  are  available  and  to  some  ways  of  using 
especially  what  methods  we  have  acquired 
through  the  biological  conception  of  man. 

STUDIES    IN   MENTAL   HYGIENE 

There  are  two  ways  of  being  interested  in 
health ;  the  common  one  is  that  of  making 
a  list  and  plan  of  all  the  things  that  are  good 
and  desirable  in  life  and  giving  the  best 
possible  description  of  Utopia  and  of  perfec- 
tion with  recommendations  as  to  how  to  get 
there.  The  way  of  the  worker  in  modern 
hygiene  is  that  of  making  a  survey  of  the 
actual  activities  and  conditions,  and  then  of 
taking  up  definite  points  of  difficulty,  tracing 
them  to  an  understanding  in  terms  of  causes 
and  effects  and  to  factors  on  which  fruitful 
experimental  analytical  and  constructive  work 
can  be  done.  The  first  type  leads  mainly  to 
moralizing ;  the  second  type  leads  to  conscien- 
tious and  impartial  study  and  to  construc- 
tive experimentation.  It  is  one  thing  to 
study  the  problem  of  mental  and  moral  health 
in  the  abstract  and  another  to  take  up  the 
definite  points  at  which  the  human  being  is 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    119 

apt  to  fail  and  to  trace  them  specifically  to 
factors  which  can  receive  consideration  in 
experimental  creative  work  and  in  a  construc- 
tive school  progratn. 

To  get  help  from  the  field  of  the  abnormal- 
ities and  difficulties  of  children  and  of  methods 
of  teaching,  naturally  requires  familiarity 
with  the  well-studied  overt  major  and  minor 
mental  disorders,  and  the  methods  of  getting 
at  their  understanding  —  and  also  with  the 
aims  and  methods  of  pedagogy.  These  are 
quite  obviously  matters  which  can  be  acquired 
only  by  practical  work  and  collaboration  in 
the  fields  concerned.  What  I  can  survey  here 
is  merely  a  sketch  of  some  fundamental  facts 
and  principles  to  show  possibilities  and 
methods  as  a  basis  for  recommendations  of 
organization. 

THE    PSYCHOBIOLOGICAL   VIEW    OF    PROBLEMS 
MET   IN    SCHOOL 

Let  me  state  as  the  first  requirement  that 
the  school-physician  should  have  a  clear  con- 
ception of  the  school  child's  nature  as  an  or- 
ganism to  be  studied  in  its  parts  and  also  as  a 
psychobiological  whole,  a  personality  and 
individual  —  a  conception  which  implies  train- 
ing in  psychobiology  for  at  least  a  certain 


120    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

number  of  the  school  physicians.  The  school 
physician  who  has  the  analytic-constructive 
biological  conception  approaches  the  pupil 
with  due  attention  to  disorders  of  eye  and  ear, 
of  the  breathing  and  the  possible  adenoids, 
and  the  state  of  nutrition ;  but  he  also  knows 
that  the  pupil  brings  to  the  school  an  endow- 
ment not  merely  of  special  organs  but  also 
of  habits  of  total-function ;  good  or  bad  food- 
habits  expressing  themselves  in  appetites  and 
more  or  less  orderly  habits  of  feeding  and  of 
digestion;  a  more  or  less  adequate  equip- 
ment of  habits  of  sleep  and  waking  and 
resting  and  activity ;  the  kind  of  life  charac- 
teristic of  the  infant  or  child  or  adolescent, 
different  from  that  of  the  adult  or  old  person ; 
he  recognizes  individual  differences  in  the 
scope  of  endowment  and  resources ;  endurance 
and  concentration  and  interest ;  or  weak- 
ness, distractability  and  indifference ;  a  vary- 
ing ability  to  control  with  foresight  the  mo- 
mentary notions,  temptations  and  desires ;  a 
capacity  of  contentment  and  satisfaction,  or 
of  unrest ;  habits  of  self-dependence  or  of 
dependence  upon  others  and  craving  for  at- 
tention ;  habits  for  team  work  or  a  lack  of 
social  instincts ;  an  ability  to  mix,  to  respond 
to  others  and  to  make  them  respond  —  an 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    121 

ability  to  understand  and  to  be  understood 
and  to  enjoy  and  be  enjoyed.  Within  this 
large  sphere  of  resources  and  activities  and 
qualifications  we  may  further  single  out 
features  such  as  varying  preparedness  to 
meet  the  unusual  or  perhaps  the  undesirable, 
such  as  sickness,  and  varying  amenability 
to  discipline  and  to  guidance,  and  capacities 
to  assume  responsibilities  and  duties.  Here 
there  is  a  mass  of  vital  facts  requiring  con- 
sideration if  the  child  is  to  be  put  into  the 
best  balanced  situations.  Dr.  Watson  has 
singled  out  from  the  greatly  varied  life  of  the 
infant  the  emotions  of  rage  and  fear  and  love 
and  joy ;  and  a  similar  sifting  will  have  to 
be  done,  with  similar  care,  for  the  instinctive 
factors  and  the  lines  of  acquisition  of  training 
of  the  older  child  so  that  we  may  get  a  natural 
picture  of  the  inheritable  dispositions  and  the 
lines  in  which  they  can  be  brought  out  and 
shaped  or,  as  the  Latin  word  has  it,  educated, 
and  studied  as  fundamental  units. 

Until  we  shall  have  our  nursery  and  child- 
hood laboratories,  might  we  not  be  guided 
in  a  helpful  manner  by  the  grave  school  of 
life,  with  its  exhibits  of  the  blundering  of 
human  nature  ? 


122    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

HELPS   FROM   MEDICAL   EXPERIENCE 

Nine  years  ago  I  formulated  my  experience 
in  a  paper  on  "What  do  histories  of  cases  of 
insanity  teach  us  concerning  preventive  mental 
hygiene  during  the  years  of  school-life  ?  "  (pub- 
lished in  Vol.  II  of  the  Psychological  Clinic). 
I  shall  not  attempt  to  restate  my  facts  and 
conclusions  as  fully  to-day  as  I  did  then,  but 
shall  choose  a  few  cases  from  a  somewhat  dif- 
ferent angle,  so  as  to  reinforce  our  conception 
of  man  and  also  so  as  to  throw  some  light  on 
how  to  proceed  in  the  study  of  the  simpler  but 
often  equally  difficult  problems  you  meet  in 
schools. 

An  attempt  to  find  in  the  literature  discus- 
sions of  common  difficulties  of  pupils  in  schools 
—  the  kind  of  thing  that  one  would  expect 
teachers  to  try  to  find  help  for  —  left  me  with 
a  remarkably  small  return.  Apart  from  the 
Paedagogische  Pathologic  oder  die  Lehre  von 
den  Fehlern  (faults)  der  Kinder  by  Prof. 
Ludwig  Striimpell  (Leipzig — 1892),  I  know 
of  no  systematic  presentation  even  in  the 
recent  works  on  the  hygiene  of  the  child's 
mind,  of  the  very  problems  which  the  teacher 
would  seem  to  me  to  meet  almost  daily  in 
his  or  her  efforts  to  attain  mental  and  moral 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    123 

health  in  the  children.  The  most  noteworthy 
specific  beginning  comes  from  your  own  midst, 
in  Dr.  Healy's  recent  book  on  Honesty,  which 
naturally  deals  with  but  a  limited  though 
widely  pervading  topic. 

I  have  no  doubt  that  there  is  in  a  way  a 
healthy  feature  to  this  abstinence  from  ex- 
cessive discussion.  Most  of  the  efforts  at 
remedy  are  properly  made  in  the  very  biolog- 
ical foundations :  in  better  feeding,  better 
rest  and  the  creation  of  more  contentment 
on  the  part  of  the  pupils.  These  efforts  are 
clearly  the  basic  substitute  for  the  effete 
and  long-winded  discussions  of  a  merely  moral- 
izing type.  But  there  certainly  are  condi- 
tions in  which  the  fundamental  helps  of  food, 
rest  and  contentment  are  insufficient,  and 
where  nothing  but  a  thorough  personality 
study  will  reveal  the  causes  at  work.  The 
problems  of  shyness  and  fear  of  recitation  and 
other  fears,  of  carelessness,  absentmindedness, 
of  unexpected  slumps  of  performance,  of 
obstinacy  and  unruliness,  of  lying,  etc.  are 
issues  which  may  call  for  as  careful  a  study  and 
understanding  as  those  dearly  morbid  condi- 
tions which  even  to-day  are  brought  to  the 
physician,  because  they  attract  the  attention 
of  the  family  as  well  as  that  of  the  teacher. 


124    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

I  take  the  liberty  of  mentioning  a  few  cases 
of  disorders  of  this  period  of  life,  as  we  could 
not  take  up  a  full  discussion  of  specially  diffi- 
cult temperaments  and  specially  difficult  situ- 
ations without  getting  too  technical  for  a 
brief  lecture.  We  can  only  pick  out  a  few 
samples  which  may  broaden  our  horizon, 
although  they  did  not  come  up  primarily  as 
school  problems. 

A  little  girl  of  8  comes  to  us  with  nervous  restless- 
ness and  a  twitching  of  the  face  which  she  is  said  to  have 
acquired  two  years  ago  from  wet  applications  used  during 
an  attack  of  tonsillitis.  She  leads  her  class,  memorizes 
poetry  for  pleasure,  must  be  the  first  in  everything ;  is 
restless  and  fidgety.  She  has  slightly  enlarged  tonsils 
and  perhaps  a  slightly  enlarged  thyroid.  In  the  Binet 
scale  she  ranks  one  year  above  normal,  especially  in  the 
points  in  which  she  has  been  drilled  at  school,  but  lower 
where  she  had  to  depend  on  her  own  wits  and  her  own 
imagination. 

Now  what  conditions  does  she  live  in?  What  is  her 
mental  background  ?  She  is  afraid  to  sleep  alone.  She 
sleeps  in  her  mother's  bed,  with  the  father  in  the  same 
room ;  she  talks  in  her  sleep,  is  restless,  and  the  mother 
wakes  her  once  a  night  to  avoid  bed-wetting,  although 
this  has  not  occurred  for  a  year.  The  child  has  her  own 
way  about  food  and  everything.  She  knows  how  to 
keep  her  mother  on  the  rack  by  telling  her  of  what  horri- 
ble things  the  girls  talk  about  at  school.  The  girl  asks 
the  mother  questions  and  is  told  not  to  ask  her  again 
about  such  matters;  and  back  she  goes  to  where  her 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    125 

curiosity  is  satisfied.  You  can  judge  where  her  fancy 
turns  from  the  fact  that  the  patient,  who  is  anxious  for 
a  baby  brother,  was  rather  delighted  when  her  mother 
had  a  headache,  as  that  made  her  suspect  a  pregnancy. 

Whose  tonsils  shall  we  have  removed  in  that  family? 
Almost  every  point  mentioned  calls  for  a  modification  of 
the  way  of  living  and  instruction  under  the  guidance  of  a 
trained  social  worker,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  the  girl 
can  be  saved  from  many  and  graver  dangers  than  the 
bad  effects  from  her  tonsils. 

Another  girl  of  6  is  brought  to  the  dispensary  because, 
since  her  mother's  death  three  years  ago,  and  especially 
since  her  father  died,  one  and  a  hah*  years  ago,  she  is 
nervous,  stands  up  in  bed,  screams,  grabs  her  grand- 
mother with  whom  she  sleeps,  is  scared,  bites  her  nails, 
does  not  play;  she  is  bashful  and  timid,  hides  behind 
the  grandmother,  but  can  be  interested  at  once  when 
candy  is  mentioned ;  she  is  curious  and  rather  character- 
istically so,  tears  up  the  toys  to  see  their  insides ;  most 
of  her  talk  is  about  her  father  and  mother,  with  such 
questions  as  whether  her  father  gets  anything  to  eat. 
She  does  not  go  out  because  she  has  so  often  been  told 
that  she  is  "the  only  grandchild."  The  little  patient 
buys  candy  incessantly.  The  nightmares  are  helped  by 
bromide;  but  a  simple  readjustment  of  the  conditions 
of  life  with  reasonable  emancipation  from  the  grand- 
mother has  helped  her  much  more  generally.  The 
grandmother  states  that  she  is  like  another  child,  so 
much  less  nervous  and  so  much  more  reasonable. 

Let  us  take  an  instance  from  the  much  larger  group 
where  all  trouble  was  tided  over  until  the  period  of 
puberty  brought  a  new  strain.  A  boy  of  15£  years  is 
brought  with  choreiform  movements  of  his  right  arm 


126    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

and  fingers,  headache  and  loss  of  appetite.  The  mater- 
nal grandmother  was  nervous;  the  mother  is  nervous 
and  has  been  mentally  deranged  in  connection  with  two 
of  her  childbirths.  The  father  too  had  a  nervous 
breakdown  "due  to  overwork." 

The  boy  had  cried  much  during  the  first  months  of 
his  life.  He  went  to  Kindergarten  at  4,  and  entered 
High  School  at  12  and  now  is  described  as  too  fond  of 
study  for  his  strength.  He  is  called  a  "night  hawk"; 
laughed  at  by  his  sisters,  etc. 

After  a  slight  burn  in  1908  choreiform  twitches  of  the 
right  arm  had  developed  with  jerky  movements  and 
some  numbness  of  the  hand  lasting  about  six  months. 
Lately  the  nights  have  become  restless  and,  during  a 
writing  test,  the  hand  began  to  jerk  again.  He  began 
to  feel  the  lack  of  air  in  school,  felt  as  if  he  should  vomit 
unless  he  got  out;  once  he  ran  away  from  home.  His 
father  suspected  self-abuse  and  as  we  learned  ourselves, 
justly  so ;  but  not  knowing  how  to  get  near  the  boy,  he 
charged  him  in  the  presence  of  the  family  with  playing 
with  himself,  which  only  aggravated  the  boy's  discom- 
fiture. To  teach  the  boy  to  understand  himself  and  the 
parents  to  understand  him,  was  the  main  problem  of 
treatment,  and  after  a  hygienic  summer,  the  boy  re- 
sumed his  normal  standing  in  school. 

THE  NEED  OF  STUDYING  THE   INDIVIDUAL  CASE 

The  reason  why  I  should  like  to  give  you 
also  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  varied  troubles 
of  the  adult  as  well  is  this :  there  is  a  wide- 
spread notion  current  among  the  public, 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    127 

and  possibly  also  in  the  medical  profession, 
that  what  you  have  to  do  in  these  disorders 
is  to  get  a  formal  diagnosis  as  the  result  of 
some  more  or  less  specific  and  remarkable 
test  or  trick,  and  that  this  diagnosis  is  then 
used  to  prescribe  a  very  particular  treat- 
ment. If  you  mean  by  diagnosis  a  knowl- 
edge and  understanding  of  what  the  moving 
forces  are  and  how  they  work  and  how  they 
can  be  modified,  you  are  on  safe  ground ;  if, 
however,  you  think  you  have  gained  much 
when  you  have  found  a  name  for  the  condi- 
tion, you  deceive  yourselves.  If  I  may  turn 
once  more  to  the  life  chart  which  I  brought 
with  me,  you  find  there  in  brief  a  record  of 
a  patient  who  was  driven  into  invalidism 
through  many  misunderstandings.  Call  the 
condition  neurasthenia  or  hysteria ;  the  fact 
is  that  you  only  describe  and  classify  it  dog- 
matically that  way.  In  order  to  understand 
it,  you  have  to  trace  the  various  factors,  and 
you  find  from  the  age  of  five  a  habit  of  head- 
aches, a  dependence  on  others,  lack  of  emanci- 
pation, the  tendency  to  appeal  for  sympathy 
by  her  complaints ;  then  after  her  marriage 
and  the  birth  of  a  child  and  subsequent  inter- 
ference with  her  normal  instinctive  life,  fear 
of  losing  the  affection  of  her  husband,  more 


128    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

invalidism;  then  several  unfortunate  and 
mutilating  operations,  a  real  evisceration  in- 
stead of  a  study  of  the  facts  in  the  case,  but 
finally  a  readjustment  under  a  treatment  re- 
establishing better  habits,  a  better  under- 
standing of  the  difficulties  and  an  end  of  mak- 
ing the  stomach  and  the  head  the  scapegoat 
of  failure  of  adaptation.  In  this  case,  as  in 
many  similar  ones,  the  school  missed  an 
opportunity  to  trace  the  situation  which 
tolerated  and  possibly  encouraged  the  persist- 
ence of  the  habit-headache,  the  reasons  for 
dependence  and  lack  of  emancipation,  etc. 

THE  PROBLEMS  OF  PHYSICIAN  AND  TEACHER 
THE  PROBLEMS  OF  ALL  LIFE 

Does  this  recital  of  concrete  medical  ex- 
perience suggest  to  you  the  close  similarity 
of  the  problems  of  the  physician  and  those 
of  the  teacher,  those  of  all  life?  What  you 
see  in  this  brief  sketch  of  our  adult  patient  is 
what  we  must  learn  to  determine  even  in 
the  minor  disturbances  and  especially  also 
in  the  disciplinary  difficulties  of  the  child ; 
we  must  not  be  satisfied  with  mere  descrip- 
tions and  with  distress  over  the  regrettable 
difficulties  and  with  off-hand  efforts  to  apply 
traditional  measures  of  correction  which  may 
not  fit  the  case  or  may  only  smooth  over  the 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    129 

trouble.  But  we  must  devise  methods  of 
getting  at  the  facts  in  a  judicious,  helpful 
and  constructive  manner,  and  that  means 
the  systematic  use  of  what  we  physicians 
and  you  teachers  alike  have  learnt  to  rec- 
ognize as  obligatory  —  a  study  of  the  individ- 
ual case  in  the  light  of  his  or  her  development 
and  home  and  school  situation. 

Where  nervous  and  behavior  disorders 
are  corrected  by  attention  to  special  organs 
as  in  eye  strain,  or  adenoids,  it  is  of  the 
utmost  importance  not  to  neglect,  in  an 
optimistic  mood,  the  weak  spot  in  the  psy- 
chobiological  balance  which  may  show  again 
under  some  other  strain  or  which  may  persist 
as  evidence  of  deficit  or  of  sources  of  irrita- 
tion. 

SCHOOL   PROBLEMS 

There  are  problems  of  the  management  of 
life  in  and  out  of  school  and  there  are  ways  of 
getting  at  the  facts  and  of  adjusting  them. 
The  school  undoubtedly  has  its  share  in  pro- 
ducing or  favoring  the  disorders  of  balance 
at  the  bottom  of  the  smaller  and  greater 
failures  of  adaptation.  It  is  my  impression, 
however,  that  the  modern  school  is  open  in 
the  main  to  fewer  charges  of  commission  than 


to  charges  of  omission.  Most  abnormali- 
ties undoubtedly  have  their  foundation  laid 
in  the  home,  by  heredity,  and  by  a  poor 
start  in  habit-formation.  In  the  European 
schools  there  is  much  concern  about  the 
Uberburdung,  the  overtaxing  of  the  school 
child,  a  problem  which  might  be  considered 
an  exception  here,  except  when  a  child  does 
not  know  how  to  work  and  how  to  play. 
The  school  is  more  apt  to  furnish  a  more  or 
less  innocent  aggravation  of  more  deeply 
rooted  difficulties,  traits  which  come  to  the 
front  as  much  or  even  more  in  the  extra- 
scholastic  life  of  the  youngster.  A  more  spe- 
cific school  problem  is  the  frequent  recurrence 
of  weariness  and  ennui,  with  puzzling  and 
meandering  in  thought  mazes.  With  this 
goes  a  tendency  to  develop  false  standards, 
habits  of  putting  up  a  sham  front  of  perform- 
ance where  the  pupil  is  hardly  doing  more 
than  serving  time;  a  formal  obedience  and 
formal  attention  without  any  real  interest 
and  performance.  This  actual  training  in 
the  intellectual  dishonesty  of  maintaining 
appearance  of  interest  and  work  where  the 
interest  is  plainly  wandering,  inevitably  warps 
the  development  of  the  fundamental  instincts 
of  action  and  its  appreciation  and  incentives. 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    131 

It  stunts  the  appetites  and  capacities  the 
child  actually  has,  and  it  creates  pockets  for 
dangerous  ruminations,  fancies  and  day- 
dreams which  are  not  apt  to  be  drawn  out 
into  the  world  of  activity,  test  and  correc- 
tion —  the  very  things  that  stand  out  all 
over  the  cases  I  have  cited.  Even  among  the 
best  we  have  to  face  a  pitfall  that  comes 
from  man's  unique  development  of  mere 
language  and  thought  habits  favoring  a  diffi- 
culty of  balance  of  thought  and  fancy  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  capacity  and  output  of 
performance  on  the  other. 

It  is  a  striking  fact  that  in  the  main  the 
more  serious  and  conspicuous  disorders  are 
much  less  frequent  and  less  glaring  in  children 
than  in  the  adult.  But  we  see  all  the  more 
clearly  the  possible  roots  from  which  the 
smaller  and  the  graver  disorders  arise.  The 
most  frequent  disorders,  if  we  disregard  for 
the  time  the  defective  growth  of  the  nervous 
system  and  the  infectious  and  toxic  affec- 
tions of  the  nervous  system  associated  with 
feeblemindedness,  epilepsy  and  kindred  de- 
fects or  retardation  of  development,  are  due  to 
defect  of  balancing  resources,  unevenness  of 
endowment  and  of  assets,  often  with  tenden- 
cies to  overreach  —  with  deficit  and  disap- 


132    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

pointment  reactions  —  or  briefly  put,  the  big 
problem  is  that  of  poorly  balanced  yearning 
and  desires.  The  greatest  problem  is  not  that 
of  feeblemindedness.  There  are  plenty  of  good 
and  well-behaved  imbeciles.  The  point  that 
concerns  us  all  is  that  back  of  everything  lie 
the  yearnings,  the  "penchant,"  the  leanings 
of  the  individual's  make-up  and  the  equation 
of  balancing  factors  of  the  individual  and  the 
social  group  —  the  capacity  to  balance  the 
resources  wherever  there  is  a  choice  or  a  need 
of  proper  adaptation  and  substitutions. 

Disease  shows  us  along  what  lines  human 
beings  are  apt  to  break  down  and  what  man 
is  not  made  for.  It  points  inexorably  to  any 
existing  discrepancies  of  balance,  and  errors 
in  the  working  out  of  one's  economic  safety 
and  efficiency.  Some  diseases  are  a  com- 
munity disgrace,  others  a  social  disgrace,  still 
others  must  be  charged  to  the  stock  (poorly 
guided  habits  of  mating)  and  to  the  life  of  the 
family,  and  still  others  to  the  individual. 
Most  diseases  are  chargeable  to  the  unwill- 
ingness or  inability  to  face  realities  of  makeup 
and  situation  and  to  shape  one's  life  in  keep- 
ing with  them.  And  the  same  holds  for  the 
major  and  the  minor  difficulties  one  meets 
in  the  schoolroom  and  playroom ;  the  shy- 


ness,  the  fears,  misbehavior,  temporary  inef- 
ficiency, etc. 

It  is  here,  in  the  apparently  trifling  signals 
of  something  being  wrong,  that  the  psycho- 
pathologist  may  be  able  to  offer  his  share  of 
help  in  the  form  of  methods  developed  in 
the  study  of  mental  disease.  Thereby  he 
serves  two  purposes :  viz.,  that  of  helping 
the  pupil,  possibly  for  a  lifetime,  by  aiding 
him  or  her  to  assure  harmony  between  means 
and  ends,  and,  second,  that  of  fostering  in- 
spiration for  a  broader  view  of  the  teachers' 
working  sphere. 

But  why  all  this  interest  in  the  abnormal? 
The  main  problem  of  the  teacher  is  the  healthy 
child.  My  contention  is  that  a  natural  in- 
terest in  all  things  human  helps  us  to  a  more 
broadly  biological  and  more  broadly  human 
and  unified  understanding  of  facts  and 
methods. 

THE   GAIN   FROM   THE    STUDY   OF    INDIVIDUALS 

In  the  examples  of  problems  of  mental 
health  just  discussed  and  even  in  the  serious 
and  full-fledged  mental  disorders,  we  have, 
I  hope,  made  it  clear  how  much  more  sys- 
tematically we  have  learned  to  inquire  into 
the  very  human  facts  of  the  patients'  biog- 


134    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

raphies.  A  thorough  search  into  antece- 
dents, into  the  temporary  situation  and  into 
the  prospects,  i.e.  into  the  facts  constituting 
the  human  biography,  proves  to  be  the  only 
rational  way  to  deal  with  most  of  the  diffi- 
culties of  mind  during  the  school  age  or  any 
other  period,  and  that  not  in  the  sense  of  a 
"faute  de  mieux,"  an  acceptance  of  common- 
sense  psychobiology  "because  we  do  not 
know  enough  about  the  brain"  and  the  like, 
but  in  the  sense  of  its  being  the  most  depend- 
able and  constructively  most  helpful  proce- 
dure, considering  the  actual  mode  of  working 
and  function  and  evolution  of  the  brain  and 
of  the  entire  individual,  the  personality. 

Even  hasty  consideration  imperatively  sug- 
gests the  desirability  of  the  study  of  pedagog- 
ical difficulties  by  a  properly  trained  psy- 
chopathologist  who  cooperates  with  the 
teacher  and  who  is  in  a  position  to  review  the 
assets  and  the  situation  of  the  child  under 
consideration  in  and  out  of  school,  and  es- 
pecially with  due  attention  to  the  full  life- 
history. 

i 

PRACTICAL   APPLICATION 

The  plan  that  suggests  itself  is  that  a  school 
physician  with  training  in  psychopathology 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    135 

attend  regular  conferences  at  which  the  man- 
agement of  the  problematic  pupils  is  brought 
up  and  discussed.  The  instances  calling  for 
special  study  might  then  be  taken  up  under 
the  direction  of  the  physician,  perhaps  by  a 
teacher  or  in  part  by  a  school  nurse,  but  pref- 
erably by  a  teacher  detailed  for  part  of  her 
time  to  make  a  study  of  the  home  situation 
and  of  all  those  facts  which  the  physician 
needs  if  he  is  to  make  a  thorough  study  of  the 
individual.  It  should  be  a  specific  part  of  the 
work  of  teachers  aspiring  to  promotion  to  do 
a  certain  amount  of  extrascholastic  or  field 
work  on  specific  children  and  to  collect  the 
facts  and  to  establish  the  relationships  be- 
tween school  and  home  which  give  that  maxi- 
mum help  that  should  come  from  the  school 
to  individual  and  community.  The  teachers 
to  whom  such  tasks  are  to  be  assigned  should 
work  under  the  guidance  of  and  in  close 
cooperation  with  the  psychiatrically  trained 
school  physician,  so  that  they  may  learn  to 
prepare  a  most  useful  life-record.  Such  a 
document,  I  am  sure,  can  readily  be  made  a 
record  of  the  fundamental  assets  and  traits 
and  needs  of  each  child  and  of  fairly  specific 
home  problems,  supplemented  by  the  record 
of  the  assets  brought  out  by  a  thorough  per- 


136    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

sonal  examination  by  a  competent  physi- 
cian, who  may  be  assisted  by  a  psychometrist 
where  the  physician  favors  such  a  division  of 
labor.  Dr.  Watson's  research  into  funda- 
mental factors  would  thus  receive  a  splendid 
supplement  by  the  continual  search  for  de- 
termining factors  and  individual  tendencies 
of  children  and  for  more  or  less  typically 
recurring  home  and  school  situations  calling 
for  special  study. 

HELP   IN   FINDING    ONE'S   BEST   PLACE 

This  kind  of  individual  study  lays  the  foun- 
dations for  probably  the  greatest  function  of 
a  public  school.  There  is  no  doubt  about  the 
school's  great  opportunity  and  responsibility 
to  help  the  child  and  parents  find  the  best 
level  and  direction  of  ambition  adapted  to 
the  individual  endowment.  The  school  has 
to  accept  the  children  as  they  are.  We  may 
supervise  to  some  extent  our  children's  choice 
of  companions  in  the  neighborhood ;  but  the 
school  must  take  the  children  who  come  prac- 
tically without  choice.  What  it  can  and  must 
do,  however,  is  to  grade  and  group  them  so  as 
to  give  them  an  opportunity  to  develop  their 
many  different  personalities  so  as  to  be  true  to 
themselves  and  also  to  the  wider  world.  It 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    137 

can  single  out  extremes  at  bottom  and  at 
top  of  the  scale,  and  it  may  make  special  pro- 
visions for  individual  treatment  of  different 
types  of  working  habits,  temperament  and 
general  behavior.  But  it  must  refrain  from 
making  the  classes  too  set  and  rigid,  and  also 
from  creating  false  standards  of  competition. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  physician's  stand- 
point blends  with  the  standpoint  of  those 
representing  educational  and  vocational  in- 
terests in  a  union  of  the  two  fundamental 
methods  of  pedagogical  psychology :  the 
test-method  and  the  method  of  study  of  the 
life-history  with  the  analysis. 

Binet,  interested  in  the  grading  of  the  pupils 
of  the  Paris  schools,  was  the  first  to  develop  a 
systematic  set  of  tests  serving  the  purpose 
of  standardizing.  So  much  is  written  on 
these  tests  that  I  take  a  knowledge  of  the  scope 
of  this  movement  for  granted.  Most  of  us  use 
the  method  as  one  of  the  most  practical  helps 
that  has  come  to  us  from  psychology.  To- 
gether with  other  tests,  we  need  as  an  obliga- 
tory help  the  method  specially  emphasized 
in  this  paper,  the  life-history  furnishing  an 
analysis  of  the  determining  factors  and  special 
individual  tendencies.  With  these  founda- 
tions the  record  of  a  child  must  furnish  a 


138    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 

most  valuable  and  indispensable  means  by 
which  the  teacher  can  get  an  idea  of  the  indi- 
vidual needs  and  capacities.  The  art  of  the 
teacher  has  to  create  a  development  of  types 
of  instruction  that  will  bring  satisfaction  in 
activity  through  using  the  special  individual 
type  of  yearnings,  and,  to  do  that,  we  need  a 
record  of  the  pupils'  needs  and  leanings. 

NEW   METHODS    OF   INDIVIDUALIZING 

For  anything  of  this  kind,  we  are,  of  course, 
in  need  of  an  adaptation  of  the  general  or- 
ganization of  the  schools.  It  is  with  the  ut- 
most satisfaction  that  we  note  the  recent 
progress  towards  individualizing  education  and 
the  cultivation  of  the^  child's  real  assets.  A 
great  step  in  advancing  healthy-mindedness 
is  no  doubt  being  attained  by  providing  more 
and  more  individual  treatment  for  each  boy 
and  girl.  I  need  not  speak  of  the  Gary  sys- 
tem. No  doubt  you  also  have  your  own 
experiments  in  your  midst.  Frederick  Burk 
of  the  California  State  Normal  School  at  San 
Francisco  has  published,  not  mere  pamphlets 
of  propaganda  as  the  titles  might  suggest : 
"Lock-step  Schooling  and  a  Remedy,"  1913; 
and  "Everychild  vs.  Lock-step  Schooling,  a 
Suit  in  Equity,"  published  in  1915 ;  not  a 


mere  appeal,  but  a  record  of  "data  of  two 
years '  experience  in  the  operation  of  a  system 
of  individual  instruction  showing  accelerated 
rates  of  pupils'  progress,  elimination  of  wastes 
of  school  time,  actual  saving  in  cost  of  school- 
ing, and  adaptability  to  various  schools." 

He  adds,  possibly  too  categorically  :  "There 
are  no  misfit  children.  There  are  misfit 
schools,  misfit  texts  and  studies,  misfit  dogmas 
and  traditions  of  pedants  and  pedantry.  There 
are  misfit  homes,  misfit  occupations  and  diver- 
sions. In  fact,  there  are  all  kinds  and  condi- 
tions of  misfit  clothing  for  children,  but  —  in 
the  nature  of  things  there  can  be  no  misfit 
children."  We  may  admit  that  some  children 
are  misfits,  but  the  community  will  have  to 
recognize  the  need  of  special  provision. 

Another  experiment  interests  me  especially 
because  it  comes  from  a  center  in  which  I 
hope  to  be  given  an  opportunity  to  help  in 
the  realization  of  the  dream  of  a  school  as  a 
community  center  described  in  its  broad  out- 
line in  the  Survey  of  September  18,  1915. 

In  a  plan  of  cooperation  between  the  Public 
School  and  Children's  Playground  Associa- 
tion, the  Public  Park  Board  and  the  Paret 
Memorial  (which  loaned  its  gymnasium  in 
inclement  weather),  "to  keep  well  children 


140    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 

well,"  Miss  Persis  K.  Miller,  of  School  No.  76 
on  Locust  Point,  Baltimore,  started,  in  the 
fall  of  1913,  an  experiment  at  liberalization 
of  the  school  with  the  knowledge  of  Assistant 
Superintendent  Hands  and  the  chairman  of 
the  Committee  on  Rules  of  the  Board  of 
Education  —  with  the  clear  understanding 
that  it  was  to  be  a  carefully  supervised 
experiment. 

She  chose  one  hundred  children,  or  two  of 
the  four  first  grades  the  first  year ;  the  follow- 
ing years  two  hundred  children,  or  the  four 
first  grades. 

The  following  is  the  plan  of  the  day's 
work :  All  the  children  report  at  school 
for  morning  exercises,  attendance  roll,  etc. 
The  children  in  each  room  are  divided  into 
three  groups.  After  the  morning  exercises 
two  of  the  three  groups  go  to  the  playground. 
The  group  remaining  with  the  classroom 
teacher,  about  sixteen  in  number,  has  the 
concentrated  attention  of  the  teacher  for  one 
hour.  Then  a  fresh  group  is  brought  from 
the  playground  and  the  classroom  group  is 
taken  to  the  playground.  Children  are  thus 
spending  about  one  third  time  in  the  class- 
room and  two  thirds  on  the  playground 
under  supervised  play. 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    141 

The  results  ?  The  health  is  noticeably  im- 
proved. There  is  less  than  one  half  of  the 
absences  formerly  noted  on  account  of  illness. 
As  to  progress  in  school,  —  the  grading  of 
these  primary  children  being  based  on  read- 
ing, —  the  children  under  this  plan  have 
read  from  three  to  four  times  as  much  as 
under  the  old  plan. 

After  the  first  year  the  experiment  had  to 
be  suspended  for  one  month;  but  the  school 
board  finally  accepted  the  demonstration. 
The  first  four  grades  are  now  using  the  plan. 
The  playground  teacher  employs  four 
teachers-in-training  from  the  Baltimore 
Teachers'  Training  School. 

What  all  this  means  is  obvious.  The  child 
like  the  grown-up  needs  action.  The  child 
needs  a  chance  to  do  in  the  best  way  that  which 
he  has  to  learn  to  do.  If  we  made  sure  that 
one  half  of  the  time  of  our  schools  was  de- 
voted to  activity  with  demonstrable  results, 
and  not  only  to  athletic  competitions  of  a 
few,  I  feel  certain  that  the  college-trained 
man  and  woman  would  less  frequently  make  the 
statement  that  they  have  to  learn  how  to  work 
when  they  come  to  the  professional  school, 
and  would  less  frequently  exhibit  a  remark- 
able incapacity  to  look  for  facts,  to  ask  ques- 


142    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 

tions,  and  to  assert  well-trained  curiosity  and 
imagination  and  a  willingness  to  try  things  and 
to  harmonize  school  and  life. 

Miss  Miller,  the  principal  under  whose  direc- 
tion the  experiment  described  above  was 
carried  out,  tells  me  that  one  of  the  greatest 
perplexities  of  the  parents  is  that  when  the 
children  leave  school  they  do  not  know  where 
to  turn  and  what  work  to  take  up.  As  the 
remedy,  the  parents  appeal  for  vocational 
training.  Give  the  pupils  some  things  to  do 
with  their  hands,  including  even  some  duties 
about  the  schoolhouse;  ask  some  people  in 
the  community  to  give  them  an  occasional 
demonstration  of  what  the  various  trades 
actually  are  and  how  grown-ups  live  and  work ; 
and  see  to  it  that  each  school  has  its  work- 
shop for  those  who  prove  capable  of  work 
that  brings  concrete  results  and  a  satisfying 
sense  of  having  achieved  something  worth 
while.  To  have  a  chance  to  do  work  of  this 
character  is  certainly  better  than  having  to 
earn  a  penny  as  a  newspaper  "middleman." 

The  child  needs  less  repression  and  more 
guiding  in  activity.  Ostwald's  "Imperative 
of  Energetics"  with  its  rule,  "Waste  no  free 
energy;  treasure  it  and  make  the  best  use 
of  it,"  is  one  of  the  most  important  principles 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    143 

of  education.  Direct  children  to  use  their 
free  energy  by  cultivation  of  habits  and  by 
training  in  the  use  of  initiative.  Do  not  cul- 
tivate weariness ;  do  not  smooth  over  weari- 
ness by  mere  overstimulation ;  but  see  that 
the  child  often  enough  uses  all  his  energies 
with  a  full  expression  of  all  his  capacity. 

If  the  pupils  can  be  led  to  develop  their 
opportunities,  to  shape  their  ends  and  aims 
according  to  their  means,  with  a  really  full 
and  wholesome  use  of  what  is  available, 
there  is  the  best  chance  for  growth  and  for 
stability  and  a  natural  development  of  per- 
sonal and  familial  and  community  problems. 

FALSE   FEARS 

We  sometimes  hear  of  a  practical  doubt 
as  to  the  application  of  any  standardization 
and  individual  guiding  of  children  as  con- 
flicting with  parental  pride  and  prerogatives. 
Where  a  really  constructive  interest  is  shown, 
we  need  not  dread  resentment  on  the  part  of 
the  parents  against  the  keeping  of  a  record 
of  facts  of  a  personal  nature,  and  against 
grading  the  children  according  to  their  fitness. 
When  we  begin  to  acknowledge  many  standards 
of  normality,  we  take  away  the  sting  of  a 
"stigma."  The  parents  will  feel  an  ever- 


144    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

lasting  gratitude  to  him  who  shows  them  where 
their  child  will  succeed.  If  the  standardizing 
is  not  done  by  perfectionists,  but  is  based 
upon  the  statement  of  facts,  and  if,  in  any 
radical  demotion,  the  consensus  of  the  prin- 
cipal teacher  and  the  parent,  and,  if  neces- 
sary, some  dependable  friend  of  the  family 
and  perhaps  the  physician,  is  secured,  the 
parents  will  feel  that  they  receive  a  help  that 
is  worth  while  and  that  meets  needs  very 
keenly  felt  at  home  as  well  as  in  school. 
Democracy  stands  for  equality  of  opportu- 
nity, and  also  for  recognition  of  individuality. 
To  collect  the  data  for  the  right  kind  of 
grading  has  further  practical  advantages. 
When  I  make  efforts  to  get  the  school  history 
of  a  patient,  I  get  from  schools  merely  an 
account  of  probably  rather  arbitrary  marks  — 
but  an  account  of  the  principal  ambitions, 
tendencies  and  assets  ?  What  are  the  teachers 
expected  to  work  with  and  to  work  for?  A 
system  with  a  definite  kind  of  order  and 
routine  —  but  more  and  more  also  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  individual  child,  the  home,  the 
gang  and  other  factors  of  the  environment. 
Why  should  not  these  facts  be  so  worked  out 
into  individual  records  that  they  could  be- 
come available  to  more  than  one  teacher? 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    145 

What  can  a  new  teacher  expect  to  do  when  a 
class  of  from  thirty  to  fifty  little  strangers  is 
thrust  upon  her  ? 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  MORAL  HEALTH 

I  have  not,  so  far,  touched  specifically 
upon  the  moral  health  of  the  child.  It  is  here 
that  no  teacher  can  do  himself  or  herself 
justice  without  individual  records. 

On  this  most  difficult  problem  of  moral 
health,  and  its  past  and  future,  the  teachers 
have  but  little  light  given  them.  Yet  should 
not  the  school  have  its  share  in  this  respon- 
sibility ? 

The  French  schools,  I  am  told,  have  made 
a  special  effort  to  introduce  moral  training 
into  the  curriculum,  with  varying  reports  as 
to  their  success.  One  of  the  most  interesting 
efforts  in  this  direction  in  the  United  States 
is  that  of  Milton  Fairchild,  who  has  developed 
several  illustrated  lectures  starting  from  ob- 
servations in  the  street,  snapshots  of  all 
kinds  of  situations  of  actual  child  and  adult 
life,  and  accompanied  by  brief  explanatory 
and  advisory  talks.  The  point  here,  as  in  so 
many  other  points  of  education,  is  that  we 
must  furnish  the  help  to  the  teacher,  give 
material  enabling  him  or  her  to  meet  individ- 


146    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

ually  the  many  actual  situations  in  the  child's 
life,  and  also  the  questions  and  the  temporary 
interests  concerning  the  many  matters  in 
which  no  textbook  course  would  hold  the 
attention  of  the  pupil.  What  is  needed  is  an 
occasional  general  lesson,  but  usually  more  is 
attained  by  a  concrete  personal  application 
or  explanation. 

The  school  has  to  leave  the  specific  recom- 
mendations and  standards  elastic  and  rela- 
tively individual.  Is  it  not  the  best  moral 
teaching  to  show  the  pupil  how  to  be  true 
to  one's  self,  and  yet  thoughtful  of  a  larger 
whole  than  one's  self  —  the  religious  universe, 
the  social  group,  and  the  family  —  and  will- 
ing to  give  thought  to  special  problems  and 
emergencies?  The  school  must  train  mem- 
bers of  different  social  and  religious  and  in- 
tellectual strata  of  life,  and  yet  bring  to  them 
the  fundamentals  of  the  nation's  standards 
of  behavior  and  moral  principles  and  the 
information  and  habit-training  which  we  must 
be  able  to  expect  from  the  average  citizen. 
We  must  keep  in  mind  that  the  school  is  a 
social  organization  supplementing  the  home  so 
as  to  give  each  child  the  environment  best 
suited  to  it,  and  that  not  so  much  with  con- 
tinual concern  for  the  future  as  for  the  effec- 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    147 

tiveness  at  the  time.  The  school  is  to  bring 
out  the  level  of  general  training  which  fits 
the  growing  child  for  the  demands  of  the  give- 
and-take  of  a  given  type  of  community,  with 
an  ultimate  ability  to  make  individual  de- 
cisions. Instead  of  pondering  as  to  what  the 
moral  training  and  standards  should  be,  we 
must  accept  frankly  the  fact  that  our  stand- 
ard is  the  standard  of  behavior  and  moral 
principles  and  the  information  and  habit- 
training  exemplified  by  the  teachers  and  the 
outside  environment,  the  home  and  compan- 
ions. Moral  training  after  all  is,  as  Sumner 
puts  it  in  his  "  Folkways,"  the  training  of  the 
mores,  of  actual  social  habits,  and  is,  more 
than  any  other  line  of  training,  a  training  in 
fitting  together  instincts  and  actual  life.  To 
discuss  this  here  and  now  with  regard  to  such 
a  specific  issue  as  the  sex  problem  would  de- 
tain you  too  long.  (See  note  in  the  appendix.) 
No  matter  how  we  conceive  the  problem  of 
mental  and  moral  health,  whether  as  a  pre- 
ventive measure  against  the  various  diseases, 
or,  as  I  would  rather  conceive  of  it,  as  a  plan 
of  educational  procedure  of  a  more  immedi- 
ately and  more  broadly  constructive  nature, 
as  a  plan  to  bring  out  the  assets  of  our  pupils 
as  true  to  their  temporary  make-up  and 


148    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

opportunities  as  possible,  —  the  highest  aim 
of  education  will  always  lie  in  the  proper 
encouragement  and  training  of  certain  emo- 
tional assets.,  the  interests,  leanings  and  curiosi- 
ties, ambitions,  likes  and  dislikes,  as  well  as  of 
purely  intellectual  assets  or  knowledge.  We 
know,  of  course,  that  as  soon  as  we  come  to 
that,  to  the  problem  of  poise,  of  interests  and 
of  the  best  assets  of  the  personality,  helpful 
guidance  can  be  given  only  by  the  one  who 
has  himself  or  herself  a  reasonable  mastery  of 
life  and  of  its  mainsprings  and  forces,  and 
the  ability  to  forge  crude  emotional  material 
into  power. 

This  means  that  the  teacher  must  be,  if  not 
necessarily  of  the  people,  at  least  with  the 
people  whose  childhood  and  growth  problems 
belong  to  the  school.  The  teachers,  like  the 
physicians,  have  to  face  many  conditions  that 
they  like  and  sympathize  with,  and  others 
that  they  can  hardly  approve  of  but  cannot 
change  and  they  must  be  able  to  help  the 
pupil  face  the  incongruities  of  life  with  a 
great  deal  of  tact  and  sound  sense. 

RESPONSIBILITIES    TOWARD    THE    TEACHER 

This  brings  me  to  my  last  topic,  and  the 
topic,  to  my  mind,  most  important  for  real 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    149 

progress  —  our  responsibilities  toward  the 
teachers. 

Queerly  enough,  in  the  face  of  the  great 
duty  and  opportunity  to  render  a  leading 
service  to  the  nation,  our  country  has  done 
remarkably  little  to  give  full  recognition  to 
the  body  of  the  workers,  the  profession  of 
teachers,  by  making  their  situation  and  ambi- 
tions such  that  they  would  not  have  to  depend 
on  unionism  methods  to  secure  their  full  share 
of  recognition. 

If  we  wish  to  succeed  in  any  program  of 
mental  and  moral  health  work  in  schools,  we 
have  to  give  our  teachers  a  chance  to  develop 
and  to  maintain  the  best  in  human  nature,  and 
to  live  in  constant  and  profitable  touch  with 
the  homes  of  their  pupils  and  the  community 
at  large. 

The  responsible  work  of  the  teacher  in  a 
modern  individualizing  school-system  is  of  a 
kind  that  demands  the  most  varied  capaci- 
ties. The  teacher  must  give  the  pupil  an 
example  of  an  orderly  and  yet  plastic  manage- 
ment of  a  daily  program  of  planned  work, 
with  due  justice  to  the  many  types  and  tem- 
peraments of  pupils  and  with  a  helpful  and 
sympathetic  understanding  of  the  life  out- 
side of  school.  The  teacher  must  be  a  living 


150    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH  IN  A 

example  of  poise  and  good  management  and 
square  dealing. 

We  must  therefore  seriously  consider  be- 
ginning our  work  of  mental  and  moral  hygiene 
among  us  teachers.  This  is  the  highest  task 
for  the  school  organization. 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  this  means  as  regards 
the  position  of  the  teacher  in  the  community. 
I  cannot  help  feeling  that  I  know  remarkably 
little  of  the  teachers  in  the  community  in 
which  I  live.  Wherever  I  have  lived,  I  have 
met  but  few  teachers  in  the  circles  with  which 
I  have  most  contact.  This  may  be  due  to  the 
undemocratic  prevalence  of  private  schools 
and  their  frequent  remoteness  from  the  homes 
and  also  due  to  the  fact  that  I  have  but 
recently  graduated  into  the  personally  in- 
terested class  of  parenthood.  In  my  Swiss 
home  environment  the  teacher  had  a  rather 
prominent  position,  close  to  that  of  the 
minister  and  the  physician,  although  apt 
to  be  at  a  natural  disadvantage  in  respect 
to  compensation,  training  and  outlook.  I 
nevertheless  feel  that  the  fact  that  so  many 
young  men  become  and  remain  teachers 
in  Switzerland  is  an  evidence  that  there 
is  something  that  holds  the  ambitions  and 
interests,  and  that  inevitably  with  a  de- 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    151 

cidedly  beneficial  effect  on  the  schools  and 
pupils. 

Stability,  proper  representation  of  the 
teachers  in  discussions  of  methods  and  poli- 
cies, the  right  to  the  freest  use  of  their  judg- 
ment in  the  use  of  the  school-hours,  and  an 
organized  collaboration  with  parents,  will  do 
a  great  deal  towards  sanitation  of  the  atmos- 
phere. Cultivation  of  mutual  pedagogical  in- 
terests among  the  teachers  themselves  and 
among  teachers  and  parents  is  to  my  mind 
the  secret  of  that  perennial  post-graduate 
work  and  post-graduate  growth  which  makes 
the  live  teacher. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  clearness  on  funda- 
mentals and  on  the  minimal  standards  of  de- 
mands means  greater  freedom  for  the  teacher, 
more  personal  initiative  and  less  dependence 
on  a  rigid  form  or  iron-bound  rules.  What 
this  means  to  teacher  and  pupil,  every  one 
of  us  realizes  when  we  call  to  mind  the  teachers 
who  did  and  those  who  did  not  leave  lasting 
impressions  upon  our  development.  Those 
who  did  were  those  whom  we  learned  to  ap- 
preciate as  personalities.  The  question  then 
comes :  What  are  we  doing  towards  shaping 
personalities  in  the  ranks  of  the  teachers  ? 

This  to  my  mind  is  one  of  the  vital  prob- 


152    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

lems  in  the  educational  system  and  one  that 
calls  most  emphatically  for  the  raising  of 
standards  of  values  of  our  entire  civic  and 
political  system.  We  cannot  go  on  taking 
out  of  the  teacher's  life  everything  that  is 
vital  and  perhaps  somewhat  difficult  to  handle, 
under  the  doctrine  that  we  must  avoid  every- 
thing that  might  touch  political  and  civic 
and  religious  and  moral  principles.  We  must 
encourage  interest  in  the  matters  that  mean 
public  leadership.  We  have  to  inject  the 
best  we  have  into  civics  and  politics  so  as  to 
make  the  field  less  exclusively  tempting  to 
the  mere  exploiter.  We  must  encourage  more 
citizens  and  more  teachers  to  take  a  re- 
sponsible interest  in  civics.  When  shall  we 
be  mature  for  that?  Hardly  as  long  as  we 
let  politics  be  what  it  is  in  our  midst  to-day. 
I  believe  we  shall  get  nearer  the  goal  when 
our  schools  become  community  centers,  with 
greater  freedom  for,  and  more  personal  con- 
fidence in,  the  teacher,  and  when  the  life  of 
the  school  child  and  of  the  educational  period 
of  man  shall  concern  itself  more  even  in  the 
early  periods  of  life  with  a  full-fledged  in- 
terest in  a  well-rounded  existence  in  school 
and  at  large,  rather  than  in  the  mere  hammer- 
ing in  of  a  set  curriculum. 


V 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    153 

With  a  development  of  school  districts, 
and  a  community  organization  with  the 
schools  as  centers,  we  shall  inject  vital  in- 
terests and  contacts  which  will  enliven  the 
ideals  and  the  practical  meaning  of  the 
teacher's  work. 

To  come  back  to  a  previous  topic :  When  I 
ask  myself  when,  in  what  part  of  the  curric- 
ulum, and  how  should  the  many  features 
on  which  health  depends  be  taught,  I  become 
impressed  over  and  over  again  with  the  fact 
that  the  many  branches  of  teaching  and  learn- 
ing interweave  tremendously.  Thus  the 
teaching  of  the  mother  tongue  is  really  a  part 
of  all  branches  of  elementary  and  later  teach- 
ing. Such  a  feature  as  clearness  and  correct- 
ness of  thinking  and  expression  belongs  to 
the  nature  study  as  well  as  to  the  lesson  in 
grammar,  and  the  accuracy,  or  lack  of  it, 
that  prevails  in  the  pupil's  home  and  social 
atmosphere,  ultimately  decides  how  much 
grammar  and  accuracy  of  language  can  be 
expected  at  school. 

The  same  I  feel  holds  for  the  grammar  of 
conduct  and  behavior,  the  grammar  of  using 
one's  instinctive  capacities  and  assets  and  the 
available  opportunities,  —  the  grammar  of 
mental  and  moral  health.  When  all  the 


154    MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH   IN  A 

teachers  are  imbued  with  interest  in  the  best 
that  is  to  be  had  in  the  fields  to  be  taught, 
when  they  know  each  other's  methods  and 
ambitions  and  when  they  are  in  equally  live 
contact  with  the  foundations  of  the  com- 
munity spirit,  they  will  find  those  opportuni- 
ties of  group  teaching  and  individual  helps 
which  are  most  telling  in  the  problems  of 
hygiene,  —  and  they  will  help  through  con- 
tact with  the  parents  to  create  an  atmosphere 
which  will  help  the  child  instead  of  being  full 
of  bewildering  contradictions. 

SCHOOL   BOARDS 

In  view  of  how  much  depends  on  the  teacher, 
we  must  realize  that  in  every  community 
there  should  be  a  most  carefully  chosen  body 
of  mediators  between  the  inevitably  greatly 
varied  types  of  indifferent  or  overzealous, 
indolent  or  fault-finding  public  and  the  body 
of  teachers  who  also  may  have  their  degrees 
of  indifference  or  of  zeal,  their  divisions  of  inter- 
ests and  their  griefs  and  worries.  Success 
will  always  depend  on  a  wise  school  board  and 
a  wise  body  of  administrators,  aiming  above 
all  things  at  a  spirit  dedicated  to  the  right 
kind  of  efficiency,  the  spirit  of  practical  ideal- 
ism among  the  teachers  and  in  the  community 


CONSTRUCTIVE  SCHOOL  PROGRAM    155 

whose  educational  work  they  have  to  handle. 
Here  again  the  problem  is  to  shape  the  aims 
according  to  the  means.  It  may  at  times  be 
necessary  to  be  conservative  and  to  refrain 
from  radical  steps  although  they  may  promise 
a  quick  attainment  of  the  millennium ;  but 
the  general  direction  should  be  toward  such 
community  organization  and  civic  and  national 
service  as  will  make  unnecessary  the  hysterical 
types  of  clamor  for  preparedness  in  the  hours 
of  danger  and  trial  that  from  time  to  time  are 
bound  to  come  to  any  community  or  nation. 

EEAFFIRMATIONS 

It  is  not  startling  novelties  that  an  out- 
sider should  be  expected  to  bring  into  this 
type  of  discussion.  One  may  be  pretty  cer- 
tain that  many  teachers  and  pedagogically 
inclined  persons  have  singly  and  in  various 
group-movements  proposed  and  probably 
practiced  the  bulk  of  what  an  outsider  might 
have  to  suggest  in  such  a  survey  of  the  field 
from  the  angle  of  a  special  science.  I  offer 
what  I  have  to  say  in  all  modesty  as  reaffir- 
mations,  as  emphases  suggested  by  my  special 
experiences,  fully  realizing  that  the  large  mass 
of  experience  of  the  professional  educator  is 
what  will  always  be  the  biggest  help  for  any 


156        MENTAL  AND  MORAL  HEALTH 

constructive  program.  I  hope  we  under- 
stand each  other  on  the  principle  of  a  general 
solidarity  of  the  health  of  the  parts,  the 
health  of  the  individual  and  the  health  of 
the  group ;  on  the  advantages  we  may  derive 
from  using  the  experiences  of  psychopathology 
and  its  methods,  on  the  advantages  of  records 
which  help  us  standardize  pupils  and  bring 
teacher  and  parents  closely  together,  and  on 
the  great  desideratum  of  bringing  the  school 
into  the  very  center  of  community  organi- 
zation. 

John  Dewey  has  described  "The  School  of 
Tomorrow";  Abraham  Flexner  is  shaping 
his  "Modern  School."  There  are  in  many 
school-systems  "schools  of  to-day"  —  full 
of  inspiration.  There  are  evidences  every- 
where of  the  will  to  grow,  and  of  the  means 
to  grow,  and  it  looks  as  if  we  had  good  cause 
to  wish  that  we  might  be  "children  of  to-day" 
if  it  were  not  even  more  fascinating  to  be 
active  workers  for  mental  and  moral  health 
in  our  educational  and  civic  world. 


THE  PERSISTENCE  OF  PRIMARY-GROUP 
NORMS  IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY 
AND  THEIR  INFLUENCE  IN  OUR  ED- 
UCATIONAL SYSTEM 


BY 

WILLIAM  I.   THOMAS 

UNIVERSITY   OF   CHICAGO 


THE  PERSISTENCE  OF  PRIMARY- 
GROUP  NORMS  IN  PRESENT-DAY 
SOCIETY  AND  THEIR  INFLUENCE 
IN  OUR  EDUCATIONAL  SYSTEM 

IN  his  treatment  of  the  infantile  emotions 
Professor  Watson  suggested  that  we  have 
greatly  overstated  the  number  of  the  original 
emotional  reactions,  and  he  is  inclined  to 
reduce  them  to  three  types  —  those  connected 
with  fear,  those  connected  with  rage  and  those 
connected  with  joy  or  love. 

In  a  study  of  a  particular  immigrant  group 
(the  Poles)  I  have  found  that  human  behavior 
seems  to  represent  four  fundamental  types  . 
of  interests  or  wishes  —  those  connected  with 
the  desire  for  new  experience,  those  connected 
with  the  desire  for  mastery.*  those  connected 
with  the  desire  for  recognition,  and  those 
connected  with  the  desire  for  safety  or  se^ 
curity,  —  recognizing  of  course  that  all  forms 
of  behavior  can  eventually  be  reduced  to  the 
two  fundamental  appetites,  food-hunger  and 
sex-hunger,  the  one  necessary  to  preserve  the 

159 


160  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

life  of  the  individual  and  the  other  necessary 
to  preserve  the  life  of  the  species. 

It  would  perhaps  be  fanciful  to  assume  that 
all  interest  could  be  reduced  to  terms  of 
organic  motion  —  physiological  expansion  in 
rage  and  joy,  physiological  contraction  in 
fear,  —  as  the  physicists  reduce  all  reality 
to  velocity  and  changes  in  velocity,  —  but 
actually  we  find  the  development  of  emotional 
states  and  of  intelligence  directly  connected 
with  the  power  of  movement  in  space. 
Broadly  speaking,  the  vegetable  and  the 
animal  differ  in  their  organic  economy  in 
the  fact  that  the  vegetable  is  stationary  and 
has  to  rely  for  the  satisfaction  of  its  hunger 
and  reproductive  needs  on  what  is  present 
in  the  soil  and  what  comes  to  it  or  falls  to  it 
(in  the  way  of  pollen  or  rain),  while  the 
animal,  through  the  power  of  motion,  seeks 
its  food  and  its  mate  by  the  exploration  of  a 
wide  region.  It  was  Professor  Mead,  I  be- 
lieve, who  defined  the  animal  as  a  mechanism 
for  utilizing  a  non-nutrient  environment  as 
means  of  reaching  a  nutrient  environment. 

If  now  the  experimenter  takes  an  animal 
as  subject,  say  the  rat,  brings  him  to  the 
proper  point  of  hunger  and  places  him  before 
a  box  containing  food,  the  actions  of  the 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  161 

animal  become  frantic;  he  pushes,  climbs 
over,  burrows  under,  bites  the  box  until  his 
random  movements  strike  the  combination 
and  he  solves  the  problem  —  perhaps  by  pull- 
ing a  string  and  standing  at  the  same  moment 
on  a  platform  inserted  in  the  floor.  Simi- 
larly, if  the  rat  is  placed  before  a  maze  con- 
taining food  and  representing  one  chance  in 
twenty  of  going  right,  he  will  begin  the  same 
frantic  and  random  pursuit,  finally  locating 
the  food  through  the  elimination  of  errors. 
Or  if  you  follow  him  into  the  open  the 
dominant  activity  will  be  pursuit,  varied  by 
flight. 

And  in  this  connection  I  think  we  must 
conclude  that  just  as  the  whole  physical 
mecJiajiism  of  the  animal  is  adapted  largely 
to  motion,  to  pursuit,  so  the  dominant  interest 
is  a  pursuit  interest,  and  the  mental  pattern 
or  schema  is  essentially  a  hunting  of  pur- 
suit pattern.  And  we  must  note  that  the 
reproductive  activities  fall  into  this  scheme 
also,  for  pairing  among  animals  and  human 
marriage  are  a  process  of  pursuit  and  capture. 

Turning  now  abruptly  from  the  rat  to  the 
creative  man,  any  one  who  studies  the  history 
of  a  practical  invention  or  a  scientific  dis- 
covery will  be  impressed  with  the  resemblance 


162  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

between  the  activities  of  the  human  being 
before  his  problem  and  those  of  the  rat  be- 
fore his  box  or  maze.  For  some  years,  in 
fact,  I  have  been  in  the  habit  of  pointing  out 
that  scientific  pursuit  is  precisely  of  the  hunt- 
ing pattern.  The  intensity  interest  on  the  part 
of  the  discoverer  or  experimenter,  his  random 
and  frenzied  movements,  his  following  of  every 
scent,  his  abandonment  of  false  trails,  his 
elation  when  he  has  got  his  result,  remind 
us  of  the  animal  in  quest  of  his  prey  and 
after  he  has  made  his  kill.  The  whole  scien- 
tific life  of  such  men  as  Pasteur,  Goodyear, 
Helmholtz,  Mayer,  is  a  pursuit  of  ideas,  either 
a  series  of  quests  or  one  long  quest,  ending 
perhaps  with  success  and  exhaustion.  Per- 
mit me  to  cite  a  single  illuminating  example 
from  the  life  of  Pasteur. 

Pasteur's  first  scientific  success  was  in  the 
study  of  crystallization,  and  in  this  connection 
he  became  particularly  interested  in  racemic 
acid.  But  this  substance,  produced  first  by 
Kestner  in  1820  as  an  accident  in  the  manu- 
facture of  tartaric  acid,  had  in  1852  ceased  to 
appear,  in  spite  of  all  efforts  to  obtain  it. 
Pasteur  and  his  friend  Mitscherlich  sus- 
pected that  the  failure  to  get  it  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  the  present  manufacturers  of 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  163 

tartaric  acid  were  using  a  different  tartar. 
The  problem  became  then  to  inspect  all  the 
factories  producing  tartaric  acid  and  finally 
to  visit  the  sources  from  which  the  tartars 
came.  This  was  the  quest,  and  the  impa- 
tience which  Pasteur  showed  to  begin  it 
reminds  us  of  a  hound  tugging  at  the  leash. 
He  asked  Biot  and  Dumas  to  obtain  for  him 
a  commission  from  the  Ministry,  or  from  the 
Academic,  but  exasperated  by  the  delay  he 
was  on  the  point  of  writing  directly  to  the 
President  of  the  Republic.  "It  is,"  he  said, 
"a  question  that  France  should  make  it  a 
point  of  honor  to  solve  through  one  of  her 
children."  Biot  counselled  patience  and 
pointed  out  that  it  was  not  necessary  to 
"set  the  government  in  motion  for  this."  But 
Pasteur  would  not  wait.  "I  shall  go  to  the 
end  of  the  world,"  he  said.  "I  must  discover 
the  source  of  racemic  acid,"  and  started  in- 
dependently. I  will  excuse  you  from  follow- 
ing the  quest  in  detail,  but  in  a  sort  of  diary 
prepared  for  Mme.  Pasteur  he  showed  the 
greatest  eagerness  to  have  her  share  the  joy 
of  it.  He  went  to  Germany,  to  Vienna,  to 
Prague,  studied  Hungarian  tartars.  "  Finally," 
he  said,  "I  shall  go  to  Trieste,  where  I  shall 
find  tartars  of  various  countries,  notably 


164  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

those  of  the  Levant,  and  those  of  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Trieste  itself.  ...  If  I  had  money 
enough  I  would  go  to  Italy.  ...  I  shall  give 
ten  years  to  it  if  necessary."  And  after  eight 
months  he  sent  the  following  telegram:  "I 
transform  tartaric  acid  into  racemic  acid. 
Please  inform  M.  Dumas  and  Senarmont."  1 
He  had  made  his  kill. 

Without  citing  further  cases,  I  think  it  is 
apparent  that  the  hunting  activity,  whether 
of  animal  or  man,  and  the  scientific  activity 
of  the  creative  man  are  singularly  alike.  And 
the  point  of  interest  for  us  is  that  no  activity 
is  interesting  unless  it  follows  the  pursuit 
pattern.  With  reference  to  pleasurable  and 
displeasurable  work,  obviously  the  more  nearly 
the  hunting  scheme  is  followed  the  more 
vivid  the  interest.  Those  forms  of  work  are 
irksome  in  which  the  interest  of  pursuit  is 
dropped  out,  either  because  the  constant  rep- 
etition of  the  process  leaves  nothing  of  the 
problematical  or  because,  through  the  divi- 
sion of  labor,  the  problem  is  destroyed  by 
breaking  it  into  fragments.  Society  has  be- 
come so  complicated  and  artificial  that  it  is 
hard  for  the  individual  to  preserve  a  type  of 
occupational  activity  of  the  naturalness,  spon- 

t  Cf.  Vallery-Radot,  R.,  Life  of  Pasteur,  61  ff. 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  165 

taneity  and  interest  corresponding  to  the 
hunting  schema.  This  is  most  perfectly  pre- 
served in  the  various  games,  which  are  all 
typical  and  integral  pursuits,  and  in  the 
favored  occupations  —  scientific  research, 
business  enterprise,  legal  andTmecRcal  callings 
—  while  hard  labor  represents  the  residuum 
after  the  interesting  problems  have  been  ab- 
stracted. 

Now  the  pursuit,  by  both  the  rat  and  Pas- 
teur, embodies,  in  my  terminology,  the  desire 
for  new  experience  and  the  desire  for  mgLStery. 
The  incipient  stage  of  the  pursuit,  or  the  gen- 
eral preparatory  condition,  is  called  curiosity. 
The  animal  must  be  interested  in  what  is 
going  on  about  him.  If  a  noise,  a  movement, 
an  approaching  object  were  ignored,  this 
might  involve  serious  consequence  of  two  kinds : 
he  might  miss  the  chance  of  pursuit  and  food, 
or  he  might,  by  failure  to  be  alert,  be  made 
the  object  of  pursuit,  might  be  eaten.  Con- 
sequently the  animal  is  always  alert,  always 
getting  information  with  reference  to  possible 
action.  This  expresses  itself  in  the  endless 
exploration  of  the  situation  by  the  child  — 
the  general  exploration  with  the  hands  and 
eyes,  putting  things  into  the  mouth,  tasting 
and  biting,  attentive  behavior  to  novel  ob- 


166  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

jects,  cautious  approach  and  retreat,  etc.  — 
and  in  adults -in  watching  one  another  and 
gossiping,  in  the  aimless  wanderings  of  the  vaga- 
bond, and  in  the  useful  "curiosity"  of  the 
scientific  man.  It  is  a  fortunate  fact  that  this 
curiosity  becomes  a  desire  for  new  experience 
in  the  abstract,  enabling  the  mind  to  take  an 
acute  interest  in  any  problem  —  whatever — 
in  scientific  pursuits. 

What  I  have  called  the  desire  for  mastery 
or  the  will  to  power,  is  one  of  the  by-phenom- 
ena of  anger  or  rage.  The  gloating  over  the 
object  of  successful  pursuit,  as  shown  in  the 
playing  of  the  cat  with  the  mouse,  and  in  the 
tendency  of  the  child  to  tease,  to  bully,  tor- 
ment, pounce  upon,  tear  to  pieces;  in  the 
swagger,  the  strut,  the  glare  of  triumph  or 
defiance;  in  gestures,  yells  and  actual  at- 
tacks ; *  later  in  the  desire  for  ownership, 
the  tendency  to  control  every  act  of  others, 
dictatorial,  censorious  and  unbearable  be- 
havior —  exerted  by  man  more  actively  and 
woman  more  passively,  by  the  latter  to  the 
degree  of  having  her  own  way  even  by  simu- 
lation of  weakness  or  sickness  —  and  finally 
in  lust  for  power,  tyranny,  political  despot- 
ism, and  in  "ambition,"  called  by  Milton 

1  Cf.  Thorndike,  E.  L.,  The  Original  Nature  of  Man,  92,  et  passim. 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  167 

"the  last  infirmity  of  noble  mind"  —  the  one 
that  survives  as  long  as  he  does. 

If  the  animal  or  the  man,  the  rat  or  Pas- 
teur, were  not  a  member  of  a  society,  the  ac- 
tivities I  have  been  indicating  would  have  no 
moral  quality,  would  be  neither  moral  nor 
immoral.  For  the  sake  of  limiting  our  prob- 
lem we  will  drop  the  rat  at  this  point,  but 
in  fact  both  animals  and  men  do  live  in  socie- 
ties, in  combinations  whose  meaning  is  a 
common  struggle  against  death,  against  ex- 
ternal enemies  and  internal  disharmonies. 
The  great  common  desire  of  a  human  society 
is  therefore  to  remain  solidary,  and  it  accom- 
plishes this  by  the  formation  of  a  code  of 
behavior.  In  a  society,  the  same  act  is  good 
or  bad,  organizing  or  disorganizing,  accord- 
ing to  its  meaning  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole 
group.  Thus,  the  desire  for  mastery  may 
express  itself  in  furious  and  sadistic  rage  and 
murder  and  pillage,  and  is  immoral,  disorgan- 
izing and  criminal  when  directed  against  the 
members  of  one's  own  society,  but  becomes 
courage,  patriotism,  heroism  and  virtue  when 
turned  against  outsiders,  in  the  protection 
of  women  and  children,  of  the  state. 

The  code  therefore  represents  the  judg- 
ment of  society  on  the  activities  of  its  mem- 


168  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

bers,  it  dictates  the  limits  within  which  the 
desires  may  find  expression,  and  it  is  devel- 
oped by  a  method  which  we  may  call  "the 
definition  of  the  situation."  This  defining  of 
the  situation  is  begun  by  the  parents  in  the 
form  of  ordering  and  forbidding  and  informa- 
tion, is  continued  in  the  community  by  means 
of  gossip,  with  its  praise  and  blame,  and  is 
formally  represented  by  the  school,  the  law,  the 
church.  Of  course  morality  and  immorality, 
organization  and  disorganization,  are  relative 
terms ;  what  would  be  considered  disorganiza- 
tion in  one  society  would  not  be  considered  so 
in  another  —  it  is  perfectly  good  organization 
to  kill  your  parents  in  Africa  because  they 
wish  to  reach  the  next  world  while  still 
young  enough  to  enjoy  it  —  and  so  the  code 
will  differ  widely  in  different  communal, 
national  and  racial  groups,  but  will  usually 
define  truthfulness,  honesty,  obedience,  clean- 
liness, unselfishness,  kindliness,  industry,  econ- 
omy, politeness,  courage,  chastity,  the  ten 
commandments,  the  golden  rule,  "women 
and  children  first,"  respect  to  the  aged,  etc., 
in  terms  of  positive  appreciation. 

Moreover,  when  the  code  has  been  defined, 
no  matter  what  its  content,  its  violation 
provokes  an  emotional  protest  from  society 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  169 

designed  to  be  painfully  felt  by  the  offender, 
and  it  is  so  felt,  owing  to  the  dependence  of  the 
member  on  society  for  safety  and  recognition. 
The  epithets,  "coward,"  "traitor,"  "thief," 
"bastard,"  "heretic,"  "scab,"  etc.,  are  brief 
definitions  designed  to  be  felt  as  painful.  And 
the  effect  of  these  definitions  is  deeper  than 
we  suspect.  Many  of  our  profound  disgusts, 
for  example,  those  connected  with  cannibal- 
ism and  incest,  are  so  developed  —  that  is, 
they  are  highly  emotionalized  institutional 
products.  And  all  codified  acts,  even  those 
of  no  intrinsic  importance,  become  eventually 
saturated  with  emotion.  It  is  a  matter  of  no 
intrinsic  importance  whether  you  carry  food 
to  the  mouth  with  the  knife  or  the  fork, 
but  the  situation  has  been  defined  in  favor 
of  the  fork,  with  grave  emotional  and  social 
consequences  —  disgust  and  social  ostracism. 
In  short,  any  definition,  however  arbitrary, 
that  is  embodied  in  the  habits  of  the  people 
is  regarded  as  right.  It  was,  for  instance, 
a  custom  to  burn  women  in  India  on  the  death 
of  their  husbands,  and  to  strangle  them  in  the 
Fiji  islands,  and  any  widow  would  demand 
this  privilege  although  she  did  not  wish  it. 
The  contrary  behavior  would  mean  social 
death. 


170  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

According  to  Mr.  Pearce,  there  were  in 
Bengal  alone  about  1200  suttees  annually, 
and  when  (in  1832)  Lord  William  Bentinck 
passed  an  act  forbidding  them,  a  petition  was 
sent  to  the  Privy  Council  signed  by  18,000 
people,  many  of  them  representing  the  best 
families  in  Calcutta,  asking  that  this  prac- 
tice might  be  allowed  to  continue.  In  Vai- 
tupu,  of  the  Ellice  Archipelago,  "infanticide 
was  ordered  by  law,"  and  only  two  children 
were  allowed  to  a  family.  In  the  Solomon 
Islands  it  was  the  practice  to  kill  all  (or  nearly 
all)  the  children  and  buy  others  from  neigh- 
boring islands,  the  idea  being  the  same  as  in 
the  case  of  the  farmer  among  ourselves  who 
sells  his  young  calves  to  the  butcher  and  buys 
yearlings.  The  Skposy  sect  of  Russia  sexu- 
ally mutilates  all  its  members,  and  since  they 
have  no  children  they  also  recruit  from  the 
neighbors,  by  missionary  efforts.  Another 
sect,  the  "Child-killers,"  devotes  itself  to 
strangling  new-born  before  they  are  contami- 
nated by  this  world.  From  Tarnopol  there 
was  reported  in  1882  a  sort  of  communal 
death.  Twenty-two  persons,  men,  women 
and  children,  were  immured  and  suffocated 
by  their  own  arrangement  in  order  to  escape 
the  census,  which  they  conceived  as  a  device 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  171 

of  Antichrist  to  get  their  names  on  his  list 
and  damn  their  souls.  In  Japan,  under  lye- 
yasu,  a  death  penalty  was  attached  to  "other- 
than-expected  behavior."  Not  smiling  when 
reproved  by  a  superior,  and  smiling  too 
broadly  when  addressing  a  superior  were  forms 
of  other-than-expected  behavior.  The  smile 
had  to  be  carefully  regulated;  to  expose  the 
molars  was  fatal. 

And  we  are  not  to  regard  these  examples 
as  merely  curious  or  disgusting  —  slavery, 
duelling,  burning  of  witches  are  examples 
of  practices  coming  within  the  definition  of 
moral  acts  in  our  own  past  —  but  as  evidence 
of  the  power  which  the  communal  defini- 
tions have  to  control  behavior.  Our  immi- 
gration problem  and  our  criminal  problem 
are  not  mainly  questions  of  inherent  mental 
and  moral  worth,  but  questions  of  the  atti- 
tudes and  norms  of  behavior  established  by 
definitions  of  the  situation. 

We  are  in  the  habit  of  calling  "primary 
groups"  those  societies  which  through  kin- 
ship, isolation,  voluntary  adhesion  to  cer- 
tain systems  of  definitions,  secure  an  emo- 
tional unanimity  among  their  members.  By 
virtue  of  their  unanimity  the  mob  and  the 
jury  are  also  momentary  primary  groups. 


172  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

Clear  examples  of  the  primary  group  are 
the  South  Slavonian  zadruga  and  the  Russian 
mir.  When  there  arises  in  these  communi- 
ties the  necessity  of  defining  a  new  situation, 
it  is  not  even  sufficient  to  reach  a  unanimous 
decision ;  each  member  must  voice  his  opinion 
and  agreement,  make  it  explicit.  Cases  are 
recorded  where  in  a  conflict  between  the  tradi- 
tional communal  definition  (say  of  poverty) 
and  that  of  the  great  state,  a  member  has 
appeared  before  the  communal  assembly,  sus- 
tained by  the  confidence  in  a  new  and  author- 
itative definition,  only  to  wither  and  collapse 
before  the  white  scorn  of  a  solidary  group. 
If  a  member  is  stubborn  his  family  members 
and  close  friends  weep,  embrace,  implore  — 
beg  him  not  to  disgrace  them  and  his  com- 
munity by  showing  the  neighbors  that  they 
cannot  agree.  It  has  been  remarked  by 
students  of  the  mir  that  boys  six  or  eight  years 
of  age  speak  and  act  like  grown  men.  They 
repeat  the  standard  definitions  of  "our  com- 
munity," "our  people." 

The  savage  tribe  is  another  example  of  the 
primary  group.  It  was  once  imagined  and 
is  still  popularly  believed  that  the  savage 
is  the  freest  person  in  the  world,  but  ethnolo- 
gists know  that  savage  life  is  regulated  by  an 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  173 

almost  incredibly  minute  and  rigoristic  code. 
The  native  Australian  boy  is  permitted  to 
speak  to  certain  persons  (mother-in-law,  older 
sister,  younger  sister,  etc.)  only  at  cer- 
tain specified  distances  —  a  hundred  yards, 
thirty  yards,  ten  yards.  During  a  period  last- 
ing from  ten  to  twenty  or  even  thirty  years, 
he  is  taken  by  the  old  men  through  a  series 
of  intermittent  ceremonies,  some  single  periods 
lasting  as  long  as  four  months,  with  dra- 
matic ceremonies  —  as  many  as  five  or  six  in  a 
single  day  and  night  —  and  oral  drill,  defining 
all  possible  situations  of  tribal  life,  and  with 
a  result  which  I  can  only  indicate  by  saying 
that,  as  to  marriage,  he  is  related  to  a  girl 
(among  the  Arunta)  by  a  ceremony  called 
tualcha  mura  for  which  we  have  no  parallel, 
but  which  means  not  that  he  marries  the  girl 
but  that  he  eventually  marries  the  daughter 
of  the  girl  when  the  latter  has  married  another 
man  and  has  a  marriageable  daughter,  and 
that,  as  to  food,  he  will  not  only  not  eat 
certain  foods  but  believes  that  if  he  does 
this  he  will  die,  and  in  some  cases  actually 
does  die. 

The  Polish  peasant  uses  a  word,  okolica, 
"the  neighborhood  round  about,"  "as  far  as 
the  report  of  a  man  reaches,"  and  this  may 


174  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

be  taken  as  the  natural  external  limit  of  the 
size  of  the  primary  group  —  as  far  as  the  re- 
port of  a  member  reaches,  —  so  long  as  men 
have  only  primary  means  of  communication. 
But  with  militancy,  conquest  and  the  forma- 
tion of  the  great  state  we  have  a  systematic 
attempt  to  preserve  in  the  whole  population 
the  solidarity  of  feeling  characterizing  the 
primary  group.  The  great  state  cannot  pre- 
serve this  solidarity  in  all  respects  —  there 
is  the  formation  of  series  of  primary  groups 
within  the  state  —  but  it  develops  author- 
itative definitions  of  "patriotism,"  "treason," 
etc.,  and  the  appropriate  emotional  attitudes 
in  this  respect,  so  that  in  time  of  crisis,  of  war, 
where  there  is  a  fight  of  the  whole  nation 
against  death,  we  witness,  as  at  this  moment, 
the  temporary  reconstitution  of  the  attitudes 
of  the  primary  group. 

Similarly,  in  the  great  religious  systems 
such  as  Christianity  and  Mohammedanism,  we 
have  a  systematic  attempt  to  make  the  whole 
world  a  primary  group,  to  win  men  away  from 
the  merely  communal,  human  and  worldly 
definitions  (or  to  reaffirm  these)  by  a  system 
of  definitions  having  a  higher  value  through 
their  divine  derivation.  God  is  the  best  de- 
finer  of  situations  because  he  possesses  more 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  175 

knowledge  and  more  prestige  than  any  man 
or  any  set  of  men  and  his  definitions  tend  to 
have  finality,  absoluteness  and  arbitrariness 
and  to  convey  the  maximum  of  prepossession. 

How  rigid  and  particularistic  these  defini- 
tions became  at  one  time  in  the  western  world 
it  would  be  superfluous  to  point  out,  especially 
if  you  are  acquainted  with  the  Westminster 
Catechism,  but  perhaps  you  did  not  know 
that  Dr.  Lightfoot,  vice-chancellor  of  Cam- 
bridge University,  announced  at  one  time  that 
"man  was  created  by  the  Trinity  on  the  23rd 
of  October,  4004  B.C.,  at  9  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing," stating  that  the  height  of  Adam  was 
123  feet  9  inches,  that  of  Eve  118  feet  and 
9  inches. 

In  the  Mohammedan  world,  as  in  the  Puri- 
tan world,  there  was  an  effort  to  define  every 
present  situation  in  terms  of  the  past.  "There 
are,"  says  Lane,  "some  Muslims  who  will  not 
do  anything  that  the  Prophet  is  not  recorded 
to  have  done,  and  who  particularly  abstain 
from  eating  anything  that  he  did  not  eat, 
though  its  lawfulness  is  undoubted.  The 
Imam  Ahmad  Ibn-Hambal  would  not  even 
eat  watermelons,  because,  although  he  knew 
that  the  prophet  ate  them,  he  could  not 
learn  whether  he  ate  them  with  or  without  the 


176  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

rind,  or  whether  he  broke,  bit,  or  cut  them. 
And  he  forbade  a  woman,  who  questioned  him 
as  to  the  propriety  of  the  act,  to  spin  by  the 
light  of  the  torches  passing  in  the  street 
by  night,  which  were  not  her  own  property, 
because  the  Prophet  had  not  mentioned 
whether  it  was  lawful  to  do  so,  and  was  not 
known  ever  to  have  availed  himself  of  a  light 
belonging  to  another  person  without  that 
person's  leave." 

But  I  do  not  wish  to  leave  the  impression 
that  definitions  are  dependent  for  their  va- 
lidity on  their  authoritative  source.  All  usual 
and  habitual  practices  are  emotionalized,  be- 
come behavior  norms,  and  tend  to  resist 
change.  The  iron  plow-share,  invented  late 
in  the  18th  century,  was  strongly  condemned 
on  the  ground  that  it  was  an  insult  to  God, 
therefore  poisoned  the  ground  and  caused 
the  weeds  to  grow ;  and  until  recently  the  old 
farmer  laughed  at  the  soil-analysis  of  the  city 
chemist.  The  man  who  first  built  a  water- 
driven  saw-mill  in  England  was  mobbed ;  the 
English  war  department  informed  the  inventor 
of  the  first  practical  telegraphic  device  that 
it  had  no  use  for  that  contrivance ;  in  the  last 
generation  there  was  a  persistent  opposi- 
tion to  the  introduction  of  stoves  and  organs 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  177 

into  churches,  and  if  we  omit  recent  years, 
and  in  recent  years  only  the  scientific  and 
practical  fields,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a 
single  innoyjaJioji  that  has  not  encountered 
opposition  and  ridicule. 

The  whole  problem  of  culture  hinges  on  the 
relation  of  the  individual  to  society.  Each 
is  an  indispensable  value  to  the  other.  The 
whole  fund  of  instrumental  values  through 
which  the  individual  realizes  his  desires  and 
achieves  his  creative  activities  is  provided  by 
society,  while  the  type  of  social  organization, 
the  variety  of  the  cultural  content,  the  ra- 
pidity of  social  change,  the  creation  of  particu- 
lar values,  depend  on  the  individual.  But  the 
nature  of  the  individual,  demanding  a  maxi- 
mum of  new  experience,  is  in  fundamental 
conflict  with  the  nature  of  society,  demand- 
ing a  maximum  of  stability,  and  it  would  be 
interesting  to  analyze  the  various  particular 
effects  of  the  repressive  action  of  society  on 
the  individual  —  the  psychic  wounds  which 
confront  the  psychiatrist,  the  complete  and 
masochistic  resignation  expressed  in  the 
hymn-books  ("Lead,  kindly  Light,  amid  the 
encircling  gloom"),  the  sullen  repression  of 
rage  during  a  whole  lifetime,  represented  by 
Jean  Meslier,  curate  of  Epigny,  who  left  at 


178  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

his  death  in  1733  a  testament  in  which  he 
declared  that  he  had  never  believed  a  word 
of  his  teachings  and  that  his  ardent  wish  was 
that  the  "last  king  might  be  hung  with  the 
entrails  of  the  last  priest,"  the  meticulous 
manipulation  of  scientific  data,  represented 
by  the  Egyptologist  Wilkinson  who  falsified 
the  dates  from  the  monuments  to  fit  the 
accepted  date  of  the  flood,  the  alternating 
violation  of  the  definition  and  confession  of 
error,  represented  by  Galileo  and  the  army 
of  recanters,  the  straining  of  the  definition 
to  include  the  desire  for  new  experience, 
represented  by  those  geologists  who  at  one 
time  reconciled  geological  time  with  the  Bibli- 
cal account  of  creation  by  assuming  six  days, 
indeed,  but  extremely  long  ones,  or  by  the 
plea  which  I  read  some  years  ago  (1910)  in 
the  Vienna  Neue  Freie  Presse  for  the  legal 
toleration  of  incineration  of  the  dead,  based 
not  upon  sanitary  grounds  or  those  of  individ- 
ual liberty,  but  upon  the  claim  that  "burial" 
as  used  by  the  church  authorities  did  not  mean 
"depositing  the  body  in  the  ground,"  but  any 
disposition  of  it,  etc. 

But  as  general  result  of  this  conflict  we  have 
the  development  of  three  types  of  individual, 
dependent  on  the  different  temperamental  dis- 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  179 

positions  and  on  the  degree  and  steadiness  of 
the  pressure  exercised  by  the  given  social 
organization.  These  we  may  call  the  philis- 
tine,  the  bohemian  and  the  creative  man. 
The  philistine  is  the  individual  who  adapts 
his  activities  completely  to  the  prevailing  defi- 
nitions and  norms;  he  chooses  security  at 
the  cost  of  new  experience  and  individuality. 
The  bohemian  is  unable  to  fit  into  any  frame, 
social  or  personal,,  because  his  life  is  spent  in 
trying  to  escape  definitions  and  avoid  sup-  <^£^ 
pressions  instead  of  building  up  a  positive  " 
organization  of  ends  and  attitudes;  he  has 
avoided  philistinism  at  the  cost  of  character 
and  success,  because  he  had  a  strong  personal 
tendency  to  revolt  against  social  pressures  or 
because  the  pressures  were  not  strong  or  con- 
sistent enough.  The  philistine  and  the  bohe- 
mian are  produced  by  the  social  effort  to  im- 
pose upon  the  individual  a  life-organization 
and  to  mold  his  character  without  regard  to 
his  personal  tendencies  and  the  line  of  his 
spontaneous  development,  and  both  are  rela- 
tive failures. 

In  contrast  with  these  two  types,  the  phil- j 
istine  tending  to  accept  all  the  definitions  and/  ^ 
the  bohemian  tending  to  reject  all  of  them,' 
the  creative  man  reconciles  his  desire  for  new 


180  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

experience  with  the  desire  of  society  for  stabil- 
ity by  redefining  situations  and  creating  new 
norms  of  a  superior  social  value.  He  disorgan-( 
izes  the  old  system  momentarily,  but  provides) 
the  elements  for  a  more  efficient  organiza-/1 
tion.     The   creative   man   and   the   criminal^   ? 
are  equally  violators  of  the  norms,  disorderly! 
individuals  from  the  standpoint  of  the  pri- 
mary group,  but  in  the  creative  man  this  dis- 
orderliness  is  expressed   in   the   setting  and 
solution  of  problems,  in  the  creation  of  new 
values,   while   in   the   criminal   it   is   merely 
negative  —  destructive  of  the  existing  system. 
All  of  these  types  except  the  philistine  repre- 
sent individualization  in  the  fact  that  they 
reject  existing  norms,  but  the  individualism 
of  the  creative  man  is  an  intermediary  stage 
between  one  system  of  values  and  another; 
his  function  is  to  produce  changes  in  the  social 
order  corresponding  to  favorable  variations 
in  biology. 

Professor  Watson  emphasized  the  mean- 
ing of  higher  levels  of  efficiency,  and  higher 
levels  of  social  efficiency  are  reached  through 
the  individualization  of  function  represented 
best  by  the  scientific  specialization  of  our  time. 
Individualization  is  a  relative  term  —  the  in- 
dividual always  remains  incorporated  in  some 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  181 

world  of  ideas  —  but  practically  the  creative 
man  secures  sufficient  individualization  to  do 
his  work,  retains  enough  recognition  to  keep 
him  sane,  by  escaping  from  the  censure  of  one 
group  into  the  appreciation  of  another  group. 
And  this  escape  seems  to  go  on  at  a  rate  cor- 
responding with  the  increased  facility  of 
communication.  The  world  has  become 
greatly  diversified,  containing  not  only  races 
and  nationalities  with  differing  norms  and 
cultural  systems,  but  various  worlds  of  ideas 
represented  by  various  scientific,  religious, 
artistic  circles;  and  by  the  fact  of  reading 
alone  the  individual  can  associate  himself 
with  those  persons  or  circles  pre-adapted  to 
his  ideas,  and  form  with  them  a  solidary 
group. 

It  does  not  follow,  therefore,  that  the 
creative  man  is  a  temperamental  rebel.  He 
may  even  be  a  philistine  at  heart.  Charles 
Darwin  was  not  a  rebellious  person ;  he  was 
simply  engrossed  in  a  pursuit,  and  was  very 
timorous  about  it.  In  common  with  his  natu- 
ralist friends  he  had  long  realized  that  some- 
thing terrible  was  about  to  happen  to  the 
Old  Testament,  but  when  he  finally  had  the 
proofs  that  species  were  not  immutable  he 
wrote  to  his  friends  that  it  was  "like  confess- 


182  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

ing  murder,"  and  in  spite  of  the  appreciation 
of  the  scientific  world  he  felt  deeply  to  the 
end  of  his  life  the  censure  of  the  religious- 
primary  group  which  accused  him  of  a  de- 
termination to  "hunt  God  out  of  the  world." 
Dr.  Meyer  pointed  out  in  his  lecture  that  we 
must  learn  to  appreciate  the  varying  standards 
of  normality.  We  recognized  already  that 
there  are  varying  standards  of  abnormality, 
and  I  assume  that  if  individualization  were 
so  complete  as  to  remove  its  subject  from 
participation  in  any  world  of  common  ideas 
whatever,  this  would  be  a  form  of  insanity. 
The  case  of  Julius  Robert  Mayer,  discoverer 
of  the  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy, 
is  almost  a  case  of  this  kind,  for  he  did  not 
succeed  in  associating  himself  sympatheti- 
cally with  the  set  of  men  preadapted  to  his 
idea  —  Joule  indeed  tried  to  plunder  him 
and  Helmholtz  ridiculed  him  as  a  "lucky 
guesser"  —  and  at  the  same  time  he  re- 
mained in  his  narrowly  provincial  Heilbronn, 
where  he  was  treated  as  the  town  fool,  accused 
of  the  delusion  of  grandeur,  forcibly  handled 
in  two  insane  asylums.  Even  toward  the  end 
of  his  life,  after  he  had  received  generous  rec- 
ognition from  Tyndall  and  also  from  Helm- 
holtz, he  regarded  himself  as  insane  in  his 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  183 

home  town.  When  Diiring  wished  to  visit 
him  he  refused  to  receive  him  in  Heilbronn, 
but  arranged  to  meet  him  in  the  neighboring 
Wildbad,  saying  that  a  visit  to  his  home  would 
excite  unfavorable  comment.  "Since  every- 
one here,"  he  wrote,  "regards  me  as  a  fool, 
everyone  considers  himself  justified  in  exer- 
cising a  spiritual  guardianship  over  me." 

But  we  are  not  to  regard  creative  activity 
and  changes  in  the  norms  as  associated  solely 
with  creative  individuals  or  even  with  design. 
The  work  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission 
illustrates  the  contrary  fact.  This  was  not  a 
radical  body,  its  "representative"  character 
precluded  this.  Indeed  it  explicitly  stated 
its  policy  of  including  its  activities  within 
the  existing  norms.  We  read  in  the  intro- 
duction to  its  report:  "[The  Commission]  has 
kept  constantly  in  mind  that  to  offer  a  con- 
tribution of  any  value  such  an  offering  must 
be,  first,  moral ;  second,  reasonable  and  prac- 
tical ;  third,  possible  under  the  constitu- 
tional powers  of  our  courts ;  fourth,  that 
which  will  square  with  the  public  conscience 
of  the  American  people." 

Nevertheless  the  work  of  this  commis- 
sion unwittingly  resulted  in  the  modification 
of  two  norms,  namely,  "circulation  of  infor- 


184  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

mation  about  sexual  matters  illegal,"  and 
"research  into  sexual  matters  taboo."  The 
post  office  declared  the  report  obscene  litera- 
ture, and  the  members  of  the  commission  were 
technically  liable  to  penitentiary  sentence. 
The  Postmaster  General  revoked  this  de- 
cision, thus  modifying  one  norm,  and  the 
participation  of  a  large  body  of  respectable 
citizens  in  a  research  into  sexual  questions 
tended  to  bring  such  research  under  a  new 
norm.  But  I  have  speculated  on  the  fate 
of  the  individual  who  might  have  perpetrated 
this  report  single-handed. 

But  why,  we  may  ask,  if  a  society  is  orderly 
and  doing  very  well,  is  it  desirable  to  disturb 
the  existing  norms  at  all.  "Little  man,  why 
so  hot ! "  And  this  question  reduces  itself  ulti- 
mately to  a  basis  of  idealism.  It  becomes  a 
question  of  happiness,  of  the  degree  of  fulfill- 
ment of  wishes  within  the  society,  and  on  the 
other  hand  of  levels  of  efficiency  as  between 
societies  in  the  ultimate  struggle  against 
death  —  as  in  the  present  war.  The  Arunta 
society  is  surpassed  in  orderliness  only  by  the 
ants  and  other  animal  societies,  where  every 
act  is  predefined  once  and  forever  in  terms 
of  organic  structure  and  external  situation. 
The  Chinese  society  represents  a  high  degree 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  185 

of  stability  on  a  relatively  high  level  of  culture. 
"Amuse  them,  tire  them  not,  let  them  not 
know,"  is  one  of  the  oldest  Chinese  political 
maxims. 

Now,  the  superior  level  of  culture  reached 
by  the  western  world  is  due  to  a  tendency  to 
disturb  norms,  —  introduced  first  into  the 
material  world  by  the  physicists  and  grad- 
ually extending  itself  in  connection  with  the 
theory  of  evolution  to  the  biological  world, 
and  just  now  beginning  to  touch  the  human 
world.  And  this  tendency  to  disturb  norms 
becomes  an  end  in  itself  in  the  form  of  scien- 
tific pursuits  whose  aim  is  the  redefinition  of 
all  possible  situations  and  the  establishment 
eventually  of  the  most  general  and  universal 
norms,  namely  scientific  laws.  And  the  suc- 
cess of  this  method  from  the  standpoint  of 
efficiency  is  shown  in  the  wonderful  advance 
in  material  technique  resulting  from  research 
for  law  in  the  fields  of  physics  and  chemistry, 
exemplified,  for  example,  in  mechanical  in- 
ventions and  modern  medicine. 

But  up  to  the  present  we  are  working  in 
the  social  world  with  norms  developed  either 
by  the  method  of  "  ordering-and-forbidding," 
or  by  that  of  empirical,  communal  "common- 
sense,"  and  our  level  of  efficiency  in  this 


186  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

field  remains  relatively  low.  The  main  pur- 
pose of  what  I  have  said  up  to  this  point  was 
to  show  that  "human  behavior  norms"  are 
not  only  very  arbitrary,  but,  precisely  be- 
cause behavior  norms,  so  highly  emotional- 
ized that  they  claim  to  be  absolutely  right 
and  final  and  subject  to  no  change  and  no 
investigation.  Moreover,  every  norm  claims 
to  be  the  norm,  the  normal,  and  any  depar- 
ture from  it  is  abnormal.  And  eventually 
every  practical  custom  or  habit,  every  moral, 
political,  religious  view  claims  to  be  the  norm 
—  not  to  recognize,  in  Dr.  Meyer's  phrase, 
the  varying  standards  of  normality  —  and 
to  treat  as  abnormal  whatever  does  not  agree 
with  it.  In  practice,  as  I  have  shown  by 
examples,  a  social  technique  based  upon  a 
rigid  system  of  norms  tends  to  suppress  all 
the  social  energies  which  seem  to  act  in 'a  way 
contrary  to  the  norm,  and  to  ignore  all  the 
social  energies  not  included  in  the  norm. 
Furthermore,  the  norms  do  change,  in  spite 
of  the  emotional  prepossessions ;  traditions 
and  customs,  morality,  religion,  and  educa- 
tion undergo  an  increasingly  rapid  evolu- 
tion, and  it  is  evident  that  a  system  pro- 
ceeding on  the  assumption  that  a  certain  norm 
is  valid  finds  itself  absolutely  helpless  when  it 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  187 

suddenly  realizes  that  the  norm  has  lost  all 
social  significance  and  some  other  norm  has 
appeared  in  its  place. 

The  classical  example  of  the  decay  of  old 
norms  in  an  evolving  society  and  their  per- 
sistence in  doctrine  and  practice  after  they 
are  dead  is  that  of  "classical  studies  as  learn- 
ing norm. ' '  Granting  that  these  studies  placed 
us  at  one  time  in  the  possession  of  cultural 
values  superior  to  those  contributed  by  the 
stream  of  Semitic  influence,  granting,  if  you 
please,  with  Sir  Henry  Maine  that  "nothing 
moves  in  the  modern  world  that  is  not  Greek 
in  its  origin,"  recognizing  also  that  in  a  hier- 
archized  society  they  retained  for  a  time  an 
adventitious  meaning  in  the  prestige  they 
gave  to  their  devotees  —  and  prestige  has  a 
real  value  as  a  tool  for  the  control  of  the 
minds  of  men  —  these  studies  did  eventually 
lose  their  value  as  universal  "learning  norms" 
in  an  industrial  world,  but  they  persist  in  our 
curricula,  and  their  retention  is  justified  by 
a  mental  process  which  we  may  call  the  ra- 
tionalization of  an  emotion.  Their  advocates 
wish  their  survival,  and  they  rationalize  the 
wish  in  the  claim  that  these  studies  have  an 
indispensable  disciplinary  value  —  a  mental 
process  resembling  the  law  of  magical  causa- 


188  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

tion  whereby  the  appearance  of  the  desirable 
and  the  disappearance  of  the  undesirable  effect 
is  decreed,  or  virtue  is  transferred  from  an 
object  of  superior  value  to  one  of  inferior  value 
by  contagion. 

Similarly  in  the  religious  world,  while  the 
church  has  practically  if  not  doctrinally 
abandoned  the  norm,  "history  of  the  world, 
unfolding  of  the  will  of  God,"  and  is  doing  all 
kinds  of  work  under  the  Kantian  norm, 
"history  of  the  world,  fulfilling  of  the  will  of 
man,"  yet  a  minister  was  able  to  say,  and 
recently,  that  a  well-known  settlement  worker 
"had  done  more  harm  than  all  the  ministers 
of  Chicago  could  make  good"  because  she 
was  not  working  under  his  norms. 

As  an  example  from  another  field  I  can  only 
refer,  without  prophecy,  to  the  retreat  of 
"freedom  as  political  norm,"  and  of  the  whole 
individualistic  system  of  norms  developed  in 
this  country  during  the  past  two  centuries, 
in  the  face  of  the  present  world  crisis. 

All  that  I  have  said  up  to  this  point  im- 
presses me,  and  I  hope  it  will  impress  you, 
with  the  urgency  of  a  more  exact  and  sys-  1  I 
tematic  study  of  human  behavior  on  a  scale  U 
and  with  a  method  comparable  with  those  j 
already  provided  for  the  physical  and  bio-  A 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  189 

logical  sciences.  We  have  a  failure  of  the 
"common-sense"  method,  not  only  in  educa- 
tion^and  the  relation  of  races  and  nationali- 
ties, but  in  connection  with  crime,  prostitution, 
slums,  insanity,  abnormality,  labor  problems 
and  all  kinds  of  unhappiness.  It  is  only  by 
following  the  example  of  the  physical  sciences 
and  accumulating  the  largest  possible  amount 
of  secure  and  varied  information  and  estab- 
lishing general  and  particular  laws  which  we 
can  draw  on  to  meet  any  crisis  as  it  arises 
that  we  shall  be  able  to  secure  a  control  in 
the  social  world  comparable  to  that  obtained 
in  the  natural  world,  and  to  determine  eventu- 
ally the  kind  of  world  we  want  to  live  in.  I 
take  it  that  the  only  reason  we  have  not 
followed  the  path  of  the  natural  sciencesv 
long  ago  is  the  partially  unrealized  fear  of 
disturbing  our  behavior  norms.  For  evi- 
dently there  were  laws  and  consequently 
practices  in  the  physical  world  that  would 
never  have  been  discovered  by  the  "  common- 
sense"  method,  and  obviously  the  same  is 
true  of  the  social  world. 

What  the  detailed  procedure  in  such  a 
science  would  be  I  am  unable  even  to  indicate. 
You  have  had  examples  of  it  in  the  preceding 
papers  of  this  series,  and  I  have  referred  to 


190  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

one  of  the  main  problems  in  the  earlier  part 
of  this  paper  —  the  laws  of  the  conversion 
of  one  attitude  or  prepossession  into  another. 
But  the  exact  procedure  could  not  be  pre- 
dicted in  this  field  any  more  than  it  could  have 
been  predicted  in  the  fields  of  physics  and 
chemistry.  The  solution  of  problems  gives 
rise  to  new  problems. 

And  in  another  respect  a  social  science  must 
be  upon  the  basis  of  the  physical  sciences  — 
it  must  go  on  endlessly  and  without  reference 
to  immediate  practical  applicability.  The 
men  who  were  instrumental  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  physical  sciences  pursued  their 
problems  as  ends  in  themselves,  without  any 
reference  to  practical  applicability.  Their 
work  was,  to  begin  with,  illegitimate  anyway, 
hedonistic  and  disorderly,  and  the  society 
which  opposed  it  had  no  expectation  of  prac- 
tical applicability,  but  anticipated  only  harm- 
ful disturbance  of  norms.  But  it  happened 
that  these  men  adopted  the  course  which  in 
the  end  yielded  the  largest  number  of  results 
of  practical  applicability  precisely  because 
they  had  unlimited  liberty  in  the  setting  and 
solution  of  problems,  and  thereby  established 
the  greatest  variety  of  laws. 

The  sciences  do  reach  a  point  where  they 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  191 

are  consciously  turned  in  the  direction  of 
practical  applicability,  that  is,  they  anticipate 
that  by  following  certain  directions  certain 
practical  results  will  appear  (and  the  life  of 
Pasteur  is  perhaps  the  best  example  of  this) ; 
but  the  history  of  the  sciences  shows  that  only 
a  method  quite  free  from  dependence  on  prac- 
tice can  become  practically  useful  in  its  appli- 
cations. We  do  not  know  what  the  future 
of  science  will  be  before  it  is  constituted  and 
what  may  be  the  applications  of  its  dis- 
coveries before  they  are  applied. 

As  to  education,  I  have  no  special  compe- 
tence to  speak  in  this  field,  but  from  being 
associated  with  educational  methods  I  have 
some  impressions ;  and  if  I  venture  to  name 
some  of  them,  I  askNyou  to  receive  them  as  a 
friendly  communication  from  one  universe 
of  discourse  to  another. 

I  have  the  conviction  that  the  preposses- 
sions of  all  of  us  are  at  a  given  moment  deeper 
than  we  suspect,  that  society  is  in  a  hyp- 
noidal  state  with  lucid  intervals,  that  these 
prepossessions  are  the  emotional  result  of 
behavior  norms  of  the  primary-group  type, 
that  educators  unconsciously  conform  the 
schools  to  primary-group  ideals,  that  in  con- 
formity with  primary-group  ideals  of  soli- 


192  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

darity  our  curricula  strive  for  uniformity 
instead  of  diversity,  that  there  is  a  consequent 
disharmony  between  education  and  life,  be- 
cause the  individual  no  longer  organizes  his 
life  on  the  basis  of  primary  group  relations,  but 
the  educational  system  prepares  him  to  do  so. 

I  suspect  that  we  should  increase  human 
happiness,  efficiency  and  productivity  if  we 
should  provide  the  young  person  with  an 
adequate  technique  in  connection  with  a 
limited  body  of  informational  definitions  and 
)lace  him  face  to  face  with  problems.  I  was 
impressed  with  a  casual  remark  of  Mr.  Dewey, 
that  if  it  were  necessary  he  would  be  willing 
to  have  the  student  forget  all  the  informa- 
tional data  imparted  to  him  during  the  four 
years  of  college  life,  if  he  could  substitute 
for  this  a  consuming  interest  in  something. 

I  have  concluded  that  we  are  so  prepos- 
sessed with  the  idea  of  giving  the  child  the 
maximum  of  informational  data  that  this 
becomes  an  end  in  itself,  that  the  mass  of 
learning  norms  is  so  great  that  the  youth 
actually  passes  the  physiological  jand  psy- 
chological age  where  he  is  due  to  erupt  along 
creative  lines.  I  am  aware  that  in  our  uni- 
versities we  create  and  find  already  created 
an  attitude  of  expectancy  with  reference  to 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  193 

definitions  and  systems  of  definitions,  that 
the  student  is  extremely  reluctant  to  under- 
take any  but  approved  and  supervised  lines 
of  interest,  that  he  brings  to  all  problems  a 
too  great  docility,  that  he  grows  old  and  cau- 
tious among  the  multiplicity  of  definitions, 
and  that  we  have  in  our  doctor's  dissertation 
what  we  deserve. 

I  am  impressed  with  the  fact  that  great 
men  so  frequently  did  their  great  work  very 
young.  Newton  had  discovered  the  law  of 
gravitation,  integral  calculus,  had  made  dis- 
coveries in  light,  had  developed  the  binomial 
theory,  at  the  age  of  24;  Linnaeus  had  his 
sexual  system  of  plants  ready  at  the  same 
age.  Ludwig,  Briicke,  Helmholtz,  du  Bois 
Reymond,  were  reforming  physiology  at  the 
average  age  of  25.  Mayer,  Joule,  Colding, 
Helmholtz,  were  all  under  28  years  of  age 
when  they  did  their  work  on  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy.  Goethe,  Schiller,  Byron, 
Keats,  Shelley,  Liebig,  Sadi-Carnot,  are  strik- 
ing examples  of  creative  work  at  an  early 
age.  I  have  reflected  upon  how  much  it 
seemed  to  help  Shakespeare  and  O.  Henry  to 
be  compelled  to  be  in  a  hurry  and  abandon 
the  conventional  norms  and  break  all  the 
rules. 


194  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

I  think  it  is  significant  that  so  many  crea- 
tive men  were  poor  in  school,  and  I  cannot 
escape  the  conclusion  that  being  poor  in  school 
was  an  unconscious  protective  device  for 
escaping  from  a  multiplicity  of  learning  with 
no  relevance  to  their  aptitude,  and  that, 
in  view  of  what  was  going  to  happen,  they 
had  to  be  the  worst  pupils.  The  chemist 
Ostwald,  in  his  interesting  book,  Grosse  Man- 
ner, has  pointed  out  that  the  precocity  of 
such  men  as  Leibnitz  and  Sir  William  Thom- 
son would  have  done  them  no  good  if  the 
schools  had  been  " better"  in  their  time. 

A  learned  man  has  been  at  some  pains  to 
determine  how  many  men  became  later  pro- 
ductive in  literature  who  did  not  learn  to 
read  in  childhood.  I  believe  he  did  not  find 
any,  but  it  would  be  of  interest  to  know  how 
many  became  productive  in  literary  lines 
who  barely  learned  to  read  and  no  more  — 
did  not  parse  or  diagram  or  etymologize  or 
make  comparative  and  historical  studies  in 
paragraphing. 

I  recognize  the  importance  of  what  we  call 
general  culture,  of  contact  with  various  worlds 
of  ideas,  but  I  am  convinced  that  great 
blocks  of  our  curricula,  both  those  represent- 
ing norms  outworn  but  persisting  through 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  195 

their  emotional  rationalization,  and  those 
representing  real  but  not  universal  values, 
or  values  disproportionately  emphasized  in 
the  curriculum,  should  be  transferred  to  the 
region  of  amateur  work  or  sport,  and  that 
this  can  be  so  arranged  as  to  minister  to  the 
emotional  needs  and  contribute  at  the  same 
time  to  the  efficiency  of  the  individual. 

Now,  whether  these  opinions  are  entirely 
justified  or  not,  the  whole  of  what  I  have  said 
makes  it  impossible  for  me  to  wish  to  dis- 
parage our  educational  system  or  our  educa- 
tors in  comparison  with  our  other  social  prac- 
tices. Indeed,  if  stones  are  to  be  thrown, 
the  sociologist  is  the  last  man  to  throw  them. 
It  does  not  solve  the  problem  to  attack  this 
or  that  weak  point  in  our  system.  If  I 
wanted  to  run  amuck,  I  think  I  should  not 
select  the  educational  but  the  legal  field  for 
this  purpose ;  and  if  the  legislator  wanted  to 
do  the  same  thing,  I  think  he  would  select  the 
sociological. 

I  hesitated  to  make  those  remarks  about 
education  because  I  feared  you  would  think 
I  thought  they  were  of  fundamental  impor- 
tance. That  would  be  to  miss  the  whole  point. 
The  point  is  that  we  have  not  got  a  method  in 
the  social  world.  The  primary  group  norms 


196  PRIMARY-GROUP  NORMS 

are  breaking  down,  mainly  owing  to  the  facili- 
tated communication  gained  through  dis- 
coveries in  the  natural  sciences  and  their 
practical  application.  The  very  disharmony 
of  the  social  world  is  largely  due  to  the  dis- 
proportionate rate  of  advance  in  the  mechani- 
cal world.  We  live  in  an  entirely  new  world, 
unique,  without  parallel  in  history.  History 
has  not  helped  us.  It  cannot  help  us  because 
we  do  not  understand  it;  we  do  not  even 
understand  an  election.  We  must  first  under- 
stand the  past  from  the  present.  We  must 
view  the  present  as  behavior.  We  must  es- 
tablish by  scientific  procedure  the  laws  of 
behavior,  and  then  the  past  will  have  its 
meaning  and  make  its  contribution.  If  we 
learn  the  laws  of  human  behavior  as  we  have 
learned  the  laws  of  mathematics,  physics, 
and  chemistry,  if  we  establish  what  are  the 
fundamental  human  attitudes,  how  they  can 
be  converted  into  other  and  more  socially 
desirable  attitudes,  how  the  world  of  values 
is  created  and  modified  by  the  operation  of 
these  attitudes,  then  we  can  establish  any 
attitudes  and  values  whatever. 

And  we  are  not  to  speak  of  "ultimate" 
or  "supreme"  values.  The  ultimate  value  is 
the  value  you  desire  at  the  given  moment. 


IN  PRESENT-DAY  SOCIETY  197 

But  if  your  "ultimate"  values  mean  the  aboli- 
tion of  war,  of  crime,  of  drink,  of  abnormality, 
of  slums,  of  this  or  that  kind  of  unhappiness, 
then  you  can  secure  these  values,  and  you 
can  secure  whatever  seem  to  you  "ultimate" 
values  afterwards,  but  they  cannot  be  se- 
cured without  a  science  of  behavior,  and  more 
than  an  "ultimate"  mechanics  or  an  "ulti- 
mate" medicine  could  or  can  be  secured 
without  the  preceding  sciences  of  mathemat- 
ics, physics,  and  chemistry. 

And,  finally,  if  we  recognize  that  social 
control  is  to  be  reached  through  the  study  of 
behavior,  and  that  its  technique  is  to  consist 
in  the  creation  of  attitudes  appropriate  to 
desired  values,  then  I  suggest  that  the  most 
essential  attitude  at  the  present  moment  is 
a  public  attitude  of  hospitality  toward  all 
forms  of  research  in  the  social  world,  such 
as  it  has  gained  toward  all  forms  of  research 
in  the  physical  world.  The  Chicago  Vice 
Commission  could  not  be  called  on  to  do  more 
than  face  a  penitentiary  sentence. 


APPENDIX  TO  DR.  MEYER'S 
LECTURE 

MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  MENTAL 
DISEASE 


J 

APPENDIX  TO  DR.   MEYER'S 
LECTURE 

MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  MENTAL 
DISEASE 

IN  a  very  readable  little  book  of  the  Home 
University  Library,  Councilman  has  defined 
disease  as  a  change  produced  in  living  beings 
in  consequence  of  which  they  are  no  longer  in 
harmony  with  their  environment,  and,  we 
may  add,  with  themselves,  i.e.  their  past  and 
their  future.  Certainly  this  conception  holds 
also  for  those  disorders  which  we  call  mental, 
because  they  belong  to  that  large  range  of 
functions  and  activities  in  which  the  individual 
acts  as  an  entity,  as  a  personality,  as  a  stage 
and  link  between  his  own  past  and  future 
and  as  an  element  of  society. 

The  greatest  difficulty  in  life,  the  greatest 
source  of  disharmony,  apart  from  the  influ- 
ences of  heredity,  infectious  disease,  and  poor 
feeding,  and  poor  chances  for  growth,  is  the 
discrepancy  between  impulse,  yearning  and 
ambition  on  the  one  hand  and  the  actual 
opportunities  and  the  actual  efficiency  of 
201 


202    APPENDIX  TO  DR.  MEYER'S  LECTURE 

performance  on  the  other.  We  know  of 
people  who  try  continually  to  put  square  pegs 
into  round  holes.  They  are  unwilling  or 
unable  to  learn  to  know  and  to  accept  their 
own  nature  and  the  world  as  it  is,  and  to 
shape  their  aims  according  to  their  assets. 

In  a  large  percentage  of  cases  in  which 
persons  come  to  grief  in  their  mental  and  moral 
health,  the  trouble  is  of  just  that  kind.  Failing 
with  what  is  frequently  impossible  and  undesir- 
able anyhow,  these  persons  develop  emotional 
attitudes  and  habits  and  tendencies  to  fumble 
or  to  brood  or  to  puzzle  or  to  be  apprehensive 
until  what  students  of  the  functional  diseases 
of  the  heart  call  "a  break  of  compensation" 
occurs,  a  break  of  nature's  system  of  main- 
taining the  balance,  with  a  more  or  less  sudden 
slump  and  implication  of  collateral  functions. 
In  our  field  this  is  oftenest  in  the  form  of  a 
declaration  of  a  simple  "minor  psychosis"  in 
which  the  patient  maintains  his  or  her  general 
understanding  of  the  situation  and  of  human 
relations,  but  develops  exhaustibility  along 
with  inability  to  rest,  insomnia,  various  de- 
rangements and  collisions  of  functions  that 
should  work  smoothly,  not  only  of  sleep,  but 
also  of  digestion,  of  the  heart  action,  of  the 
breathing,  of  the  thyroid  function  —  this  is 


MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  DISEASE    203 

what  we  commonly  and  euphemistically  speak 
of  as  neurasthenia  with  its  irritable  weakness. 
Or  the  patient  develops  obsessions,  fear  of 
death  or  of  going  insane,  doubts,  false  feelings 
of  obligation,  unwarranted  fear  of  dirt  and 
infection  leading  to  habits  of  washing  the 
hands  incessantly,  and  tendencies  to  ponder 
instead  of  acting,  counting,  saying  things  a 
definite  number  of  times,  etc.  Or  the  patient 
gets  into  a  way  of  paying  attention  to  various 
queer  feelings  and  conditions  of  special  parts 
and  organs  which  really  are  normal  but  become 
the  scapegoat  for  abnormal  and  blundering 
conflicts  and  emotional  states.  These  con- 
flicts and  emotional  states  then  are  apt  to  rise 
to  the  surface  as  peculiar  dreamy  states, 
fancies,  outbreaks  of  emotions,  or  even  con- 
vulsions or  various  antics  of  special  organs  or 
functions,  such  as  loss  of  power  of  a  limb  or 
joint,  or  peculiar  attacks  of  vomiting,  of  feel- 
ings of  a  lump  in  the  throat  and  many  other 
really  protean  disorders.  The  real  relation, 
however,  of  these  manifestations  to  the  actual 
difficulties  remains  concealed  from  the  layman 
and  often  actually  hidden  from  the  patient, 
as  in  states  of  hysterical  amnesia,  where  the 
patient  may  not  remember  anything  of  the 
circumstances  and  the  associative  setting  of 


204    APPENDIX  TO  DR.   MEYER'S  LECTURE 

the  disturbance.  The  condition  is  like  an 
evasion,  not  a  real  disease  of  the  organs  but  a 
disorder  of  balance  by  evasion  or  substitution, 
a  disorder  of  management,  adaptation  and 
adjustment. 

Or  the  patient  passes  into  a  state  of  depres- 
sion or  the  opposite,  a  state  of  elation  and 
overactivity,  an  occasional  swinging  of  the 
pendulum  into  melancholia  or  into  hypomania 
or  mania,  often  lasting  months  or  even  years, 
without  actual  damage  to  the  brain,  and  usu- 
ally with  ultimate  recovery  or  at  least  periods 
of  normal  health.  Or  the  patient  may  pass 
into  a  state  of  delusion  in  which  the  individual 
asserts  his  or  her  own  beliefs  rather  than  the 
judgment  of  a  safe  consensus  of  a  group, 
either  as  a  transitory  upheaval  lasting  a  few 
days  or  weeks  or  months,  or  as  the  kind  that 
tends  to  vitiate  the  attitude  for  the  rest  of  a 
life  by  spinning  a  web  of  false  interpretations 
between  the  patient  and  reality.  Sometimes 
this  disorder  leaves  the  intellectual  functions 
so  keen  as  to  deceive  the  average  person  as  to 
the  very  existence  of  any  mental  disease,  but 
oftener  causes  a  gradual  perversion  and  de- 
terioration difficult  or  even  impossible  to  arrest 
until  nature  reaches  its  own  resting  places  of 
false  balances,  by  no  means  always  a  com- 


MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  DISEASE    205 

plete  perversion,  but  nevertheless  often  enough 
marking  a  lasting  damage. 

A  large  group  of  these  conditions  of  what 
we  might  call  fantastic  dilapidation  constitutes 
what  has  been  named  dementia  prsecox  — 
by  no  means  always  a  lasting  condition  such 
as  the  word  dementia  might  indicate.  My 
studies  in  these  cases  have  convinced  me  that 
a  nature  difficult  to  understand  and  shut-in 
and  often  somewhat  precocious  and  uneven, 
habits  which  tend  to  day-dreaming  and  playing 
with  one's  own  thoughts  and  feelings,  habit 
conflicts  and  drifting  into  mysticism  and  the 
like,  can  be  traced  in  many  cases  to  early 
childhood  and  to  the  school  years,  where  they 
ought  to  have  been  recognized  and  helped  to 
a  safer  equilibrium ;  it  is  especially  striking 
that  these  disorders  are  relatively  frequent  in 
apparently  very  conscientious  or  actually  over- 
conscientious  individuals.  Many  of  these 
cases  are  exceedingly  instructive  in  open- 
ing one's  eyes  to  conditions  which  play  a 
r61e  in  causing  minor  disturbances  of  the 
neurasthenic,  psychasthenic  and  hysterical 
type  and  to  many  problems  which  merely 
tend  to  reduce  the  efficiency  of  the  person 
without  becoming  an  actual  disease.  It  is 
through  these  conditions  that  nature  may 


206    APPENDIX  TO  DR.   MEYER'S  LECTURE 

make  cruel  experiments ;  but  from  them  man 
can  learn  much  for  the  benefit  of  a  healthier 
and  more  developed  humanity. 

The  types  thus  sketched  naturally  do  not 
cover  all  the  disorders.  There  are  other  con- 
ditions disabling  our  mental  life,  judgment 
and  behavior  brought  about  either  by  the 
habitual  use  of  stimulants  and  false  foods, 
and  by  infections,  apt  to  lead  to  delirium  or  to 
various  kinds  of  delusional  states;  or  by 
damage  to  the  brain  by  syphilis,  which  has 
proved  to  be  the  cause  of  a  most  distinctive 
kind  of  mental  disorder  usually  called  paresis ; 
or  we  may  deal  with  premature  changes  of  the 
blood  vessels  or  with  other  damage  to  the 
brain.  Many  of  these  are  states  which  a  mere 
knowledge  of  how  to  steer  clear  of  risk  and 
danger  will  fail  to  prevent,  unless  it  becomes  an 
ingrained  part  of  our  civilization  and  indi- 
vidual life.  The  study  of  alcoholism,  of  the 
venereal  diseases  and  of  many  infectious  dis- 
eases makes  one  realize  how  deeply  rooted 
most  occasions  for  disease  are  in  the  common 
soil  of  all  the  good  and  bad  in  human  life,  in 
the  yearnings  and  leanings,  the  penchant,  the 
equation  of  balancing  factors. 

In  order  to  avoid  any  misunderstanding 
which  might  suggest  a  one-sided  emphasis 


MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  DISEASE    207 

of  the  so-called  mental  psychogenic  factors, 
let  me  emphasize  that,  between  the  disorders 
of  mainly  functional  collisions  and  maladapta- 
tions  and  those  representing  more  or  less 
direct  and  palpable  brain  damage  due  to 
palpable  outside  causes,  there  are  intermediate 
conditions  in  which  vicious  circles  damaging 
various  organs  or  the  brain  itself  are  estab- 
lished by  emotional  conflicts  and  bungling 
ways  of  trying  to  fit  incompatibilities  and  by 
disregard  of  the  strain  on  the  various  organs 
which  participate  in  the  integrated  reactions 
and  in  the  biological  regulations.  The  studies 
by  Cannon  show  how  internal  organs  play  an 
essential  role  in  emotions ;  we  know  that  the 
thyroid  gland  can  be  thrown  out  of  balance 
by  emotional  strains;  we  know  that  the  sex 
glands  can  be  kept  under  abnormal  stimula- 
tion. Thus  various  organs  can  start  special 
vicious  circles  and  cause  intercurrent  damage 
to  functions  and  even  to  structures,  by  court- 
ing complications  and  chances  for  infections. 
To  this  survey  you  can  readily  add  what 
we  know  of  heredity  and  of  defective  develop- 
ment ;  the  problem  of  the  difficult  and  poorly 
fitted  individual,  —  the  type  on  which  so 
much  early  work  is  being  done  in  Chicago,  — 
whether  delinquent  or  not  delinquent,  always 


208    APPENDIX  TO  DR.   MEYER'S  LECTURE 

a  center  of  solicitude.  Some  of  these  no 
doubt  are  the  less  fortunate  types  of  the  in- 
numerable possible  varieties  of  progeny  the 
wealth  of  which  Dr.  Jennings  has  described ; 
some  may  be  clearly  the  products  of  poor 
stock,  but  many  clearly  also  the  victims  of  a 
further  unwillingness  to  fit  the  environment 
and  the  training  to  the  case,  and  the  case  to  the 
environment  it  is  fit  for.  From  time  to  time 
we  find  an  unscrupulous  magazine  article 
preaching  the  gospel  of  brain  operation  in 
these  trying  cases.  Most  people  know  better ; 
only  a  few  of  these  unfortunate  cases  present 
disorders  remediable  by  operation  or  by  any 
one  simple  trick.  Experience  gives  no  en- 
couragement to  the  extreme  optimist  nor  is 
there  an  excuse  for  the  pessimist  who  sur- 
renders to  the  concept  of  degeneracy  and 
inactivity.  Our  present-day  inquiry  is  bent 
on  a  systematic  study  of  the  working  of  the 
various  determining  factors  and  a  search  for 
those  factors  of  adaptation  which  can  be 
adjusted.  This  is  beyond  question  the  only 
method  with  which  to  reach  that  far  larger 
matter  of  concern,  that  which  will  bring  us, 
teacher  and  physician,  much  more  frequently 
together  than  do  the  outspoken  cases  of 
mental  disease.  I  refer  to  the  innumerable 


MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  DISEASE    209 

minor  lapses  from  the  hygiene,  the  health 
and  the  efficient  life  which  give  us  the  human 
satisfactions  of  real  growth  and  development. 
That  an  early  and  sensible  understanding 
of  the  child's  individual  problems  is  a  vital 
gain  in  shaping  more  wholesome  lives,  and 
that  the  problem  is  the  same  for  the  teacher 
and  for  one  interested  in  mental  hygiene,  can, 
I  think,  readily  be  gleaned  from  the  above 
sketch. 

THE   PROBLEM   OF   SEX-EDUCATION 

No  problem  is  more  closely  related  to  the 
nervous,  mental  and  moral  equilibrium  and 
none  more  closely  dependent  on  the  coopera- 
tion of  home  and  school  than  that  of  what  the 
school  shall  do  with  the  realities  of  sex-life. 
Sex-instruction  without  a  sympathetic  and 
cooperative  home  training  is,  to  say  the  least, 
problematic.  Help  for  the  parents  with  an- 
swers to  the  many  childhood  questions  in 
harmony  with  our  school  instruction,  and,  in 
turn,  consideration  in  the  school  instruction 
of  what  the  home  training  offers,  would 
seem  to  create  the  only  safe  road.  Nai'vet6 
alone  cannot  be  depended  upon.  There  is, 
however,  much  to  the  principle  that  one 
should  not  incite  interest  in  details  which  are 


210    APPENDIX  TO  DR.  MEYER'S  LECTURE 

apt  to  lead  to  curiosity  and  experimentation. 
Cultivate  confidence  in  the  right  kind  of 
persons  and  ease  of  discussion,  with  avoidance 
of  curiosity  in  regard  to  the  parts  which  react 
with  specific  and  stimulating  sensations ;  and 
where  desirable,  refer  the  pupil  to  the  best 
prepared  or  qualified  person  for  individual 
discussion,  not  of  generalities,  but  of  specific 
points  that  the  child  may  bring  up.  Efforts 
in  this  field  are  apt  to  be  futile  unless  one 
has  the  cooperation  of  the  parents  and  a  knowl- 
edge of  their  point  of  view  as  well  as  the  con- 
fidence of  the  pupil ;  one  should  be  able  to 
base  one's  talk  on  the  pupil's  own  personal 
experience,  and  to  let  one's  own  larger  experi- 
ence merely  form  a  background  from  which  to 
encourage  spontaneous  expression  and  with 
which  to  convey  a  feeling  of  safety,  with  a 
minimal  amount  of  dogmatic  guidance  which 
might  overs timulate  curiosity.  There  should 
be  no  dogma  of  exclusive  salvation;  but  a 
confidence  that  every  individual  development 
can  with  proper  control  and  guidance  lead 
to  a  natural  and  sane  capacity  to  become  a 
father  or  a  mother  when  the  conditions  are 
fulfilled. 

Coeducation  of  boys  and  girls  is  a  desidera- 
tum conditioned  by  the  home  situations  and 


MODERN  CONCEPTIONS  OF  DISEASE    211 

the  social  fitness  of  the  community,  and  also 
by  the  scope  of  individualization  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  pupils.  There  should  be 
ample  opportunities  for  individualization, 
especially  if  practical  work  is  introduced  into 
the  school,  and  it  may  even  be  well  to  limit 
the  number  of  coeducational  exercises  for 
certain  topics  and  certain  groups  of  pupils, 
without,  however,  attracting  the  attention 
to  the  sex-issue  as  such,  but  rather  to  the 
division  of  interests. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


University  of  California  Library 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


